


The Story of Her Life

by skyereads



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Darkfic, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Force Sensitive Cara, Force Visions, Near Death Experiences, Non-Linear Narrative, Star Crossed lovers/Force-crossed Lovers, That's Not How The Force Works, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, bounty hunter Cara
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:08:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 32,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25121401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyereads/pseuds/skyereads
Summary: "Can one have memories of things that have never happened?"Cara Dune is a woman haunted by visions, some of her past, some of her future. Her bounty hunting leads her to a Mandalorian and his very strange, but powerful pet. The story of her life is about to change irrevocably.
Relationships: Baby Yoda & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) & Cara Dune & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Cara Dune & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Cara Dune/The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Comments: 102
Kudos: 100





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is wholly appreciated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title and story inspired by Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life" and the movie Arrival.  
> Warnings for this chapter: Near death experiences, unhealthy amounts of alcohol consumed, canon typical violence.

“Check again?”

It was night on Sorgan, a crescent moon hung over head and a little girl was getting ready for bed.

“Again?” Cara was tucking the blankets in, looking fondly and half-sternly at the ten-year-old. “But I already looked!”

“One more time,” Lyssa mewled, giving her best doe-eyed stare, “please.”

“Okay. Look with me?”

The little girl nodded, steeled her face with courage. Cara ducked to her knees, lifted the blankets to look under the bed. Lyssa’s pigtails tickled the side of Cara’s cheeks. Her hair was getting long and would need to be trimmed soon. It was thick and black, just like her mother’s.

“See. Nothing.”

Lyssa peeked too, confirming her mother’s vigilance was done. Under the bed they found some dust bunnies and an old pair of slippers.

“No monsters.” Cara bopped Lyssa’s nose.

Lyssa was her mother’s daughter, dark and feisty, but for her eyes they were her father’s – deep, amber, and inviting. Made Cara think of fireside chats on a chilly night, a warm hug, and Alderaan-chocolate cookies.

“Tell me a story,” the girl said, getting back under the blanket. She pulled a stuffed bantha to her chin.

Cara sat next to her, tucking the girl into her side. They did this every night. “What kind of story?”

“You know.” Exasperated, the small child rolled her eyes and made a face.

“But we tell you this story every night. Aren’t you bored of it?”

“Nope, and anyway,” she said, lifting her tiny, smug nose into the air, “you tell it better than daddy.”

That surprised Cara.

“And don’t leave anything out!” Lyssa insisted. Cara could not say no to that pout. “From the beginning.”

“The beginning of what?”

“The beginning of everything.”

* * *

By the time she makes it to Arvala-7, it’s already ended.

The road is already paved with destruction. At every turn she makes there is evidence of him.

From her vantage point on the red cliff she tinkers with the settings on her binocs. There are bodies everywhere. None moving. There’s a large battering gun poised before the door – or what would be the door, if it was still standing. Instead, there’s a cavity in the wall, as if it was blasted through. She counts up the bodies she can see, littering the compound.

He must have been sitting on this same rock, she thinks, looking around for traces of him on the landscape around her. But the rocks are too jagged and dry for footprints. No use tracking here.

She sighs, defeated. Then, stands, wipes the red dust off her pants, adjusts the pack on her shoulder and makes her way down the cliff face. Keeping low, in order to read the shifts in the sand, she finds another set of prints that appears from the east, but they’re not human, heavier, probably metal. A bounty droid, she’s sure of it. She’s already swallowing the lump in her throat.

Not a single one is alive. They’re efficient like that.

Impressed, she followed the tracks to the compound entrance, saw the duracrete walls, sandy and brown, puckered with blaster shots. She touches one column.

Its signature is faint, but there. She closes her eyes and focuses. He stood with his back pressed against here, taking cover. Probably thought they could shoot their way out. She hears whispers of their conversation. They play like a vision over her eyelids.

_“…Unless I am mistaken you are as of yet, empty-handed…I have a suggestion. We split the reward….Let’s go!”_

When she reopens her eyes, she knows where they headed next.

She picks her way through the bodies, takes what weapons she can. One’s got a pouch of credits, and licking her dry lips, takes it – figures, what good is it to the dead?

The droid she finds. It’s got a hole bigger than her hand in its central processing system. She’d heard somewhere he hated droids. Doesn’t remember where she heard that. She’d heard lots of things about this one, they couldn’t all be true.

She laughs out loud. The sound shocking in the dismal room.

“Bastard,” she says, kicking the metal piece over.

It’s the first time she’s spoken in a while and it falls like sandpaper on her tongue. The dust on this planet is irritating. She hadn’t had a drop of water since her morning meal. The flagon’s in her pack. She could easily take it out – drown the whole rest of it if she wanted to. Instead she wipes her mouth, spittle already drying on her lips. Her wrist is caked with sweat when she pulls it away from her face.

There’s a hoarse noise from the corner, behind a wall. It’s one of the Trandoshan bounty hunters – prickly looking sentients, deadly. He’s still alive, coughing up blood when she leans over him.

“Where is it?” She kicks his side.

“T…t-took it,” he rasps, grunts as she makes another jab into his ribcage.

“Who did?” But she already knows the answer.

“Mand-da…” the Trandoshan whimpers. She digs her blaster into his neck. “ _Mandalorian_.”

“Where?” She blurts out.

But the Trandoshan is already dead.

* * *

The first time Cara met death she was only seven years old. It was at the lake house on Alderaan. A beautiful spot dotted with evergreen trees, heavenly blue skies, and blue-green water. (When she thinks of home it’s like a bubble of air that grows in her chest.)

The water was cold. She’d been holding her older brother’s hand, kicking along beside him, when he let go and she slipped. Fell under the surface. She remembers the murky waters overhead. The burning in her lungs. She thinks she’s screaming, but she remembers no sound.

She sees it. Something black grabbing her around the waist, curling inside her innards and squeezing. Long arms of a monstrous beast and a thousand eyes, slumbering in the shadows, finally coming to wake.

When they pulled her from the water – hacking and spitting, vomiting spongy lake water – she’s crying, lips blue. Her father wrapped her in a towel and carried her into the house. Tucked her under his chin and rubbed her back until she stopped shaking. Her brother’s pale in the corner of the room, face painted with horror. His cheeks are wet. She mistakes it for the lake water.

That night, and every night after, she makes her father check under her bed for monsters.

* * *

It’s the Ugnaught she finds next.

He’s not afraid of her, which surprises her. Lots of people are afraid of her. Usually go running when they see her silhouette.

It’s almost like he knew she was coming.

He’s feeding two ugly-looking beasts in a pen. They’ve got funny legs, wide mouths with sharp teeth, and tiny arms. Blurrgs, she thinks they’re called.

“You’ve missed them,” the Ugnaught tells her. His voice is grating, chalky, like the red dust on this planet. It chafes under her skin, much like her own clothes, sticking to her, hot and sweaty under the sun all day.

Her disappointment feels like stampede of beasts hitting her chest.

“They’re already long gone. Come,” he tells her, “I have prepared tea.”

“I’m not thirsty,” her voice cracks, betrays her. Her mouth is already watering. The flagon in her pack is now empty.

He’s already walking towards his domed hut, his gait unstable. “I have spoken.”

The Mandalorian was in the room – she could sense it. She’s always one step behind. There was a lingering taste of something in the air – metal, first and foremost, a brutal assault on her mouth, and something else…she licks her lips again. Briny, but it eludes her.

The tea is hot, and somehow, it’s a relief to her aching throat.

The Ugnaught watches her while he refills her cup. “You fought in the Rebellion.”

She’d forgotten to cover it. The one on her cheek can’t be helped. She places her whole hand over the tattoo band on her right bicep, as if hiding it. But it would take a lot more than that to forget those days.

“You were hunting it?” The Ugnaught asks her, taking pity on her he pours more tea. He’s still not afraid of her. “Do you know of what you seek?”

“The quarry? No.”

“It is not what you think,” he tells her.

“I know it’s fifty-years old.” She’s hungrier than she thought, wolfs down the tea the Ugnaught has prepared.

“It’s an ugly thing. Ancient looking. Not farmed, wild grown. I would know.” He gestured vaguely to her face. “You look as though you were grown on the Cytocaves of Nora.”

“You’ve worked on the gene farms, Ugnaught?”

“I was a _slave_ on the gene farms. And my name is Kuiil.”

Kuiil tells her he’s worked enough for three human lifetimes to pay off his debt before he was released. Tells her the honor of working with one’s hands.

“Imperials?” She snarls the word, bares her teeth at him. The swallow of tea she takes is too forceful, washed down with bitterness. While her fight isn’t against this Ugnaught, it is with time. And she’s losing.

Kuiil grunts. He’s regarding her with far too much curiosity. It makes Cara look away, sheepish, self-conscious. “You have the look of one who is followed by ghosts.”

Her face falls, mouth hangs open. “How do you…?”

The Ugnaught puts up his hand to stop her words. “I have lived a long time. I have seen much.”

He seems wise, if she's reading the lines in his face with accuracy, and for some reason she trusts him. Perhaps her dreams told her so. “They are not ghosts,” she corrects him. “Nor memories. Can one have memories of things that have never happened?”

Her host is silent for a long moment. “Help me peel these roots. I will prepare us a meal.”

Once her task is done, Kuiil throws the chewy roots into a stew, with sweet-smelling herbs and a hearty grain. Cara’s stomach grumbles. She does not remember the last time someone showed her such kindness – and for nothing in return. If any in the galaxy ever did that kind of thing anymore.

She feels herself cracking, like ice melting in the sun.

They sit and eat in silence for a while, eyeing each other.

“I have heard of what you speak of,” he says to her.

It’s already dark outside. When the sun dropped below the large red cliff-face, jagged in the distance, like a fault line splitting sky and earth, the whole valley plunged into darkness. There is no moon that night.

“They have many different names for this power. Superstition. Sorcery.”

“A bedtime story for children?” Cara supplies with a wry smirk.

“It works in mysterious ways. It is said that some go mad – they do not know what is a dream and what is real.”

Cara snorts loudly into her soup.

Kuiil looks affronted. “You can see things that others cannot. I call that a gift.”

“I call it a curse,” she huffs.

“These things you see, do they always come to pass?”

But Cara doesn’t know how to answer that.

* * *

The second time Cara met death was during the war. He greeted her like an old friend.

The battalion had been surprised, caught in an ambush. Cara screamed herself hoarse, her teeth chattering as she loaded up her weapon and unleashed a volley of rounds. She should have seen the sniper.

When she woke in the hospital she felt as if a stampede of creatures had walked across her chest. Later, they told her it was the field medic that resuscitated her – performed CPR on her until she came back, beating on her chest, breathing into her mouth, until a pulse came back. Even later than that, she found that the field medic that had saved her life had died later that day. Shot accidentally by friendly fire.

A week goes by before she’s released from the hospital, she’s honorably discharged from military service. But she wants nothing more than to go back into the fray. Instead she meets a man named Greef Karga and he hires her, but that came much later, after she spent a year burying herself under alcohol and sex, living like a shade.

Time felt irrelevant. All she saw was her family. But they couldn’t be _here_ , not _now_ – they were all dead. She drank to keep the ghosts at bay.

* * *

Cara wakes in a bed. It’s not her own. There’s a man next to her. She wonders if it’s the one from her dreams.

Almost every night, Cara dreams of a man she’s never met. But she knows him better than she knows herself. Sees his face so clearly – his brown eyes – but always, always, when she wakes it fades. Lost like the shades. Like the ghosts of her parents. She has often looked too hard at strangers, trying to find _that_ face in the crowd. But she’s never been able to.

The man next to her is decidedly not the one from her visions. She shimmies on her pants, haphazardly thrown during the previous night’s escapade and sneaks out.

The sun has not yet risen fully. The streets of Nevarro are empty. She showers at her own home, languishes in the fresher, washes the sweat and sex off her. The lingering taste of booze from the night before as heavy as guilt on her tongue.

Cara’s nursing a caf when Greef takes a seat aside her usual booth, which serves as her temporary office.

“These Imps keep showing up. Another transport arrived last night. I don’t need to tell you how it’s making all our clients nervous.” The older man shakes his head, pouts. “Why they think he’ll return here…” He makes a dramatic show of throwing his hands up to the heavens.

There’s a humming coming from somewhere, growing stronger, makes Cara shake her head out. Greef pauses in his tirade, bemoaning the sorry state of his city and its futile attempts to rid themselves of the shackles of their Imperial overlords, when his eyes snap sharply onto her, just an ounce of concern on his features.

“Late night, Dune?” There’s an avuncular lilt to his question.

There’s a grinding of metal now, and Cara takes a strong gulp of the caf. It’s still hot, and decent, considering a server droid fixed it. She’d rather not talk about her habits with her boss, not proud of them herself. But the older man doesn’t judge her, he’s sympathetic, if not protective of their bond.

“If he’s a smart man, and he is, he’s more than a parsec from here.” Greef shakes a disbelieving head. He counts up the fobs ready for the day’s hunts. “It’s a shame because, I always liked Mando,” he says upon noticing her staring at him. “Quiet guy. Never said much. Did you ever meet him?”

“Maybe in my next life,” she says, but she can barely hear the words in her own head over the loud humming.

That’s how her visions always start. A hum and a sound like grinding metal.

_There’s a ship landing in a forest. Tall trees and dense foliage. It has almost all the makings of Alderaan, for a second, she thinks she is dreaming of home. It’s almost too good to be true. There are ponds in the distance, with soft lights of a village – welcome and homey. She smells krill and spotchka, and the hemp of the thatched roofs, protecting something safe. Something secret._

_There’s a sound like a roar and the falling of trees. The screech of blaster fire in the night. Heavy metal hitting her chest, making her fall over as an explosion rips the sky overhead. Breathless pants come from her mouth. There’s dirt on her knees. Dirt in her hair. Orange flames reflected on silver metal. And two red dots, like the eyes of a great beast, in the darkness._

_It spins, falls away. An inhale and an exhale and a whole day pass. The stars appear and all is calm and peaceful. She turns to the night sky to ask of it one wordless question, seeking it with her eyes: Where?_

_The stars answer with a twinkle: Sorgan._

More grinding metal and then it fades.

“Dune!” Greef’s booming voice brings her out of it, for she had spilled her caf and it was rushing over the edge of the table. “Maybe take a half-day today. You’re looking a little peaky.”

When Cara wipes up the spilled caf, she finds black dirt under her fingernails.

* * *

_She’s lying on an elegant bed – more space than she could ever hope to have. His nose is buried in her hair, sighing contentedly and it tickles her ears. Every blink of his eyelash is as soft as butterfly wings on her skin. Her body is sore, achy. But she’s happy, so happy. A sun sitting in the center of her chest, far too bright to possibly contain._

_She pulses when he puts his hands on her, lacing them together, holding on her round belly. Beneath their palms is the softly beating heart of their child._

* * *

It’s me, isn’t it?” That’s Lyssa. She’s pointing to a holopicture of a group of them. “And there’s ad’ika. And you, and daddy, and…and who’s that? That man in the background?”

Cara turns away from the most recent holomessage her husband has just left her to find her six-year-old daughter sprawled on the floor of the office. She’s got her legs kicked in the air, scrolling through the holopicture album. Cara starts at the picture. She hasn’t seen this one in a long time. It was taken right after Lyssa was born when they went to Nevarro.

The man in question is Greef Karga. “That’s my old employer,” she tells Lyssa.

“What does employ- em…” she sounds out the word. “What does that mean?

She’s so smart, Cara thinks. Can’t imagine where she got her brains.

“He was my boss. I used to work for him.”

“Like work, like daddy’s work?”

“Exactly.”

Lyssa snorts. “When I grow up I wanna be retired.”

Cara thinks Lyssa’s father must have taught her that word. He’s been dropping hints about doing that forever. Cara laughs anyway, puts the holoprojector away. She’s missing that man with an ache she can’t explain, but he'll be coming home soon.

There’s a delighted shriek from the other room and then a crash of something. “Did your brother get into the frog legs again?”

* * *

It’s morning when the unregistered shuttle drops her off on Sorgan. She gets the strangest feeling she’s been here before, and she has the urge to check for monsters in every shadow.

He’s not hard to find. The locals are much too chatty. Of course, they’ve seen a man in all metal. Funny, he had the strangest little creature with him – will you be wanting more spotckha?

Cara loves spotchka and so says yes.

His ship – the Razor Crest – is parked in a forest. She sits in a tree, watching through dense tree cover. There’s an outline of something shiny bending down by the landing gear –a flash of beskar winks.

She can’t believe she’s this close.

This Mandalorian doesn’t hear her when she approaches, sneaking down from the tree with all the stealth she’s been taught. She takes him by surprise, greeting him with a kick to the chest. Goes for his head next. He ducks under it and her fist slams against the durasteel of the Crest – she’s glad she wore her armored gloves.

When she knocks her fist on his helmet, it’s hard, rings like a bell.

He fights back, punches her in the kidneys and she grunts, loud, doubles over. Before he reels back for another one, she’s launching her knee into his cuirass. They brawl some more, and she sends him to the ground with a wallop of a punch.

When he lands, she hears the breath get knocked out of him, and she has to catch herself. Then, he’s clicking something on his armor and orange flames shoot from his right wrist. Missing the heat by inches, she steps on his vambrace – hard. She crouches over him, puts a knee to his chest, gets her hands around his throat, the soft cowl of his cape bunching under her grip.

He’s forcing her away, worn leather pressing under her chin and she tries to wriggle away. But then the sky and the ground switch places.

All the air leaves Cara’s lungs. Later, she’ll be impressed, for not many live to tell they’ve put Cara Dune on her back as quickly as this Mandalorian. His metal armor clicks and clacks as they fight and she hears him grunting through his helmet as she sends him flying overhead with a flourish of her strong legs, using her lower center of gravity to her advantage, and forcing him off her.

She sees his rifle leaning against the ship’s hull, and grabs it, charging the double-pronged taser and sticks it out. It catches him on the beskar. Anywhere else, and it might have killed him.

“No! Wait – you don’t unders –” His hand reaches towards her, but then he’s spasming, body convulsing under the taser, and the words die on his tongue. The Mandalorian falls, face first in a heap at her feet.

Gasping for air, she reaches down to feel for a pulse under his cowl, horrified. It’s there, steady like a drumbeat and Cara’s relieved.

She binds his wrists and leaves him there to find the quarry. Circling the ship once and it’s all clear. Then she rights her weapon and enters up the ramp. His carbonite freezer is off. There are no frozen quarries in the hold. A quick survey of the ship turns up nothing. There’s a pile of blankets in what passes for a bunk, but no sign of the fifty-year old. She may not know what she’s looking for but whatever it is, it’s not here.

Cara blows air out of her nose roughly, punches the wall of the ship in disappointment. Well, Karga would know what to do with the Mandalorian. Bounty or no.

He’s still knocked out when she’s done with her thorough comb of the ship, and so, taking him around the ankles, she unceremoniously drags him through the forest. There’s another shuttle that leaves by midday tomorrow; the two of them will be on it. She’s stripped him of his weapons in case he wakes up and taken the disruptor rifle for herself because she likes the feel of it.

But the Mandalorian is _heavy_ , so their progress is slow.

The air on the planet is temperate, cooling as the sun goes down and there’s a sanctuary stillness to this forest. A soft wind passes through, blows at her hair, and she hears the leaves of the trees, the creaking of branches. It shouldn’t put her on edge, but it does.

She thinks of those red eyes from her vision.

The armor snags on a root by one large tree trunk and she has to go around and lift him. He’s still breathing. His grey cloak fans out in the wake of his body. It’s riddled with dirt and sticks, wiping up the forest floor.

Cara’s head snaps up, for she’s heard it twice now – a rustling in the bushes. But’s it’s faint, like a small creature. Must be the native animals on this planet. Then she hears a soft coo and whips around, looking sharply down at her feet. The strangest thing stands before her. It barely comes up to her knee, but it has the widest pair of eyes she’s ever seen, and large bat-like ears. It’s green and entirely helpless. It makes another chirping noise, looking up at her, ears twitching with curiosity.

“Shoo,” she tells it. “G’on, get lost. Shoo!”

Sorgan has the strangest wildlife, she thinks. It’s wearing brown robes that are much too big. It waddles towards her reaching out a three-fingered hand. “C’mon get on. Go back to your home.”

It babbles like a baby. Cara never did the baby-thing.

Hiking the Mandalorian’s leg, she continues dragging him. The baby follows the whole time. She ignores it, setting her jaw tightly and keeps moving. She also ignores the way her heart flutters and her face darkens every time it makes those pitiful little chirps.

By the time the sun is setting she decides she’ll stop for the night, make a quick camp, and settle in. Binding the Mandalorian’s ankles before she sits, so when he wakes and decides to make a run for it, he won’t.

The green sentient is still following her. After she makes a small fire and unloads her pack, the thing waddles towards her, watches her as she tears roughly into a dried meat stick.

“What? You hungry?” She asks it. When she waves the food around, its dark stare tracks it, drooling. It’s got the air of a kicked pup or a lost Loth-cat.

Rolling her eyes, Cara rips off a piece and offers it the baby. It makes a satisfied sound and eats it, stepping closer. She almost smiles and so, tears off another bit for it.

She can’t stop gazing at the large pools of its eyes. They’re hypnotic. Swallow her form, unflinchingly. She can see the reflection of the fire in them, and even the faintest bits of starlight. They’re welcoming, innocent, and she’s flooded with something unfamiliar, a rare mix of pity and affection.

There’s something _off_ about the little one. It’s refracting her senses, and when she probes with her feelings, they’re immediately deflected, scattered, pushed around, distorted, like light around a massive object. The smell of brine hits her nostrils.

The creature is like a void, made of something stronger than even she can penetrate. It makes her curious.

“Where’d you come from?” She touches one large ear of the creature. It’s soft under her finger, fuzzy hairs sprinkle the top of his head, lined like an old man’s. He purrs under her petting, and it makes her smile grow. “Huh, where’s your home?”

When she touches his forehead, she’s bombarded with a sensation so powerful, Cara’s whole being tremors. It’s a strange mix: an overwhelming amount of fear and loneliness, coupled with a spark of joy and trust and tenderness, but it’s directed at the man in metal, still unconscious beside her.

Like she’s been shocked by electricity, her hand jolts away from his touch, tingling. Cara folds over, the wash of emotion so strong she’s begun to cry, but she’s not sure from what. Staring dumbfounded at the Child, Cara tries to understand what happened.

“Wh-wha…what – are you?” she gasps at it, still collecting her breath.

The baby is not able to answer her question, instead reaching out eagerly for more food and she obliges. The rush of feelings do not dissipate when the connection is severed and they linger within Cara, diluted, but still potent.

A low groan makes Cara draw her weapon. The Mandalorian stirs. Suddenly he sits up.

“Where – where is it?” He yells. Then he stops, seems to hold his breath. He’s staring at the Child sitting by Cara, chewing on food. She sees the pauldrons on his shoulders drop as he exhales with relief.

“Don’t try anything.” She’s still got her blaster trained on him as he adjusts himself. His legs and wrists are still bound, and he moves stiffly, unable to get comfortable. He’s hunched over, looking very dejected, even in all that expensive gleaming armor.

“I won’t run,” and he raises his wrists as if surrendering.

Cara’s not stupid. The man is a walking weapon. One knock of his beskar helmet against her face and that’s a broken nose and a concussion.

“Hm-mm,” she raises a wry eyebrow at him. “I saw what you did on Arvala-7. You made quick work there.” Mandalorians are famous for their ruthlessness, and there’s a touch of flattery in Cara’s tone. "Did you try to make a deal with that bounty droid too?”

“It tried to kill him.” His voice was gruff with disuse. Cara watches his helmet make the slightest inclination in the direction of the Child by her feet.

Cara feels her stomach drop out. She gestures her blaster at the kid. “You mean _this_ is it?! This is the fifty-year-old quarry?”

 _It_ makes a noise at Cara, raises a hand for more food.

She thinks of the compound on Arvala-7. All that destruction for this tiny thing. The briny scent in Kuiil’s house. So, she’d been hunting the wrong thing this whole time!

The Mandalorian grunts, scoots himself backwards to lean against a tree trunk. He might be bruised under all that armor. Cara hadn’t been gentle, nor pulled her punches. The taser from the pulse rifle can be a bitch too. Then, quickly, she banishes any thought of empathizing with him and scowls roughly at him. Finally, she puts the blaster away, tosses a spare meat stick at his feet.

“You should eat. It’s another half a day’s walk and I’m not lugging you anymore.”

He makes no movement towards the offer of food. The Child shuffles over to the Mandalorian. It climbs up onto the armored legs and sits right in his lap.

She’s not sure why, but she thinks her sudden stroke of compassion is more a remnant of the Child’s emotions, rather than her own true inner feelings. For it feels foreign in her own skin, the sudden wash of gentleness that overwhelms her observing the way the Mandalorian softens, pets the Child’s head with a gloved finger. It’s a hell of a strange sight, and Cara’s seen a lot of weird, inexplicable things all over the galaxy.

Despite her sharp eyes, somehow, she missed exactly when and how the Mandalorian’s attention went from the baby in his lap to move and settle on her. She can’t tell where his gaze lands and that unnerves her.

“You work for Greef Karga.” It’s not a question. Cara will learn later that directness is part of his character. For now, the man is a mystery.

“He still talks about that showdown on Nevarro a few weeks back. Sorry I missed out on all the fun.” She makes a lewd face at him, smirking over her food.

She’d been off planet then. By the time she’d come back to the cantina, the trouble had died down. Didn’t stop Greef from pacing up a storm, wildly gesticulating as he retold the story to anyone who would listen of how they had the Mandalorian bounty hunter pinned, until a covert of them swooped in to give him a smooth getaway. The older man even proudly showed off the hole in his jacket from the blaster shot.

Cara had sat there with a show of apathy, snickering slightly at her boss’ tendency to bloviate. Later she drowned out her disinterest in the whole thing by plucking a doe-eyed recruit from the ranks and putting them on their knees before her, chasing her heated pleasure until she forgot her own name. Until she forgot all time and space.

“You don’t know what you’re getting into,” came the Mandalorian’s stern warning, bringing Cara sharply out of the unspooling river of memories.

The present moment stretched itself before them in a long unwavering stare, a battle of wits: dark eyes to darker visor. There is a line of tension in his body, taut and protective around the little one.

“Imperials on Nevarro – they’re the ones who want him.” He jerked the lip of his helmet.

“Don’t pretend to be so high and mighty. I heard you took the payment anyway…”

The Mandalorian stilled, offended. Her words had wormed their way under the metal, scorched on his skin. He roiled with fury; she could practically feel it. It fills her with pride, throwing acid where it hurts the most.

When he finally speaks, it’s low, threatening. Cara shivers with it. “I wear this beskar as a reminder of the sin I committed in returning him. That’s _my_ burden.”

She curls her bottom lip, bites into it. Yeah, Cara knows a thing or two about sin.

The Mandalorian is impassive as he regards her. Cara doesn’t appreciate the scrutiny. The barest snarl twitches on her cheek; she feels the flinching muscle above her lip. Keeping her voice neutral, she says, “You should eat.”

The fire hisses and pops. Cara throws a few sticks into it to keep it alive. There’s a hooting owl, but it’s far away. The forest around them comes strangely alive at night. They hear invisible animals scrounging on the floor, birds and others scattering over the branches overhead. Cara relaxes back against a tree trunk, keeps her feet pointed at the Mandalorian. It’s a show of course, for her hand is never far from the blaster on her hip, or the rifle by her side.

“I can’t,” he says.

“Don’t like the food?” she retorts. She makes a show of gnashing greedily into her own dinner – the ration bar is dry, but it’s sustenance.

“I mean I can’t.” He rolls his shoulders, leans away from her. “My helmet.”

Cara isn’t afraid to stare, mutely at him. Something is tethering her to this present; it’s languishing slowly between them, seconds dropping like thick beads of perspiration. Cara is aware of her body, alive, breathing; the blood coursing through her veins, the bones in her fingers creaking, wishing for a weapon. There’s a sheen of sweat on her upper lip that’s salty when she licks it. She could be on Nevarro right now, having a strong drink and good fuck. Her pubic hair itches with that thought.

Instead, she’s sassing a Mandalorian.

The smell of the small fire is acrid, the wood damp. It brings memories: campfires on Alderaan as a child, marshmallows cooked over the open flame, sweetly caramelizing in her mouth; sweaty, humid nights with her platoon, loud laughter and bitter liquor; a village, razed by Imps, makes her gag; she couldn’t get the smell of burning flesh out of her nostrils for days.

The tenebrous sheen of his visor never leaves her figure. “I can’t remove it,” he says.

Her eyes narrow. “That’s not my problem.”

A bead of water misses her mouth from the flagon as she sips from it. It falls down her chin, drops below the collar of her armored top, goes directly between her breasts. She swears the Mandalorian tracks the droplet with his eyes.

Cara barely sleeps. The second she feels her eyes close she forces herself awake, ripping herself into consciousness. But the Mandalorian hasn’t moved, might have fallen asleep himself. Of course, she can’t tell. The Child has long since nodded off, curling into a ball, and snuggling on Cara’s pack, the worn material providing him a pillow. Its soft sighs are pleasant, unbothered by nightmares.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading. the journey continues. comments and kudos appreciated.
> 
> WARNINGS: graphic pregnancy, some very mild smut, and canon typical violence.
> 
> Enjoy!

She remembers something else.

_It was not the easiest of births. Her contractions lasted hours._

_Cara sat on the floor of the fresher, focusing on her breathing, rhythmic and steady, counting the seconds between each one. She tried to sleep, waking with a shout each time a new one tore through her body. Someone held her. She’s pulled against a broad chest, held between strong legs, rocking gently as she cried. She squeezed a hand so tightly she thinks she might have broken a few fingers, but there’s not a single complaint or flinch. There’s water falling down her throat every so often, and an injection for the pain – but it’s not enough for the feeling of her body ripping itself in two. Steady hands dap her at brow, sweaty and flushed._

_Liquid fell from between her legs, bloody and viscous, stained a path down to the drain._

_“Push! Push now, Cara. I got you.”_

_Cara screamed and screamed. She nearly blacked out from the effort._

_Then, as if from a faraway place, she heard a strangled cry._

_“I got you. Both of you,” is murmured against her ear._

_Healthy and pink, it is placed upon her bosom. Cara counted ten fingers and ten toes, sees dark tufts of hair on a small round face. When its mouth opens in a wail, Cara’s laughing through the pain, her face wet with tears._

* * *

She’s up before dawn, kicking the Mandalorian’s legs to wake him.

“We’re moving.”

It’s slow going. Cara keeps nervously checking her chronometer. The shuttle leaves in T-minus two hours, and the next one won’t be for another half-cycle. She’s unbound his legs so he can walk, but her blaster is pointed at his back the whole time. Cradled in his arms is the Child, peeking over the shiny pauldron to stare at her.

Scowling back, she’s thrown by the way its eyes – large, round, black – go right through her. She’s unable to explain what happened the night before when she touched its head, the rush of emotions that coursed through her took a long time to dissipate. It’s a strange one, that’s for sure, seems unthreatened by Cara’s presence. She wonders how much he understands. Wonders what and why the Imperials on Nevarro want with a baby. That twists ugly in her stomach. She quells the fire with a different thought, reminds herself it’s not her business. She just wants to get paid so she can go back to doing…whatever it is she was doing before.

The Mandalorian stumbles. She catches him, flashes him a look, thinking he’s playing with her by slowing down their progress.

“You’re not going to screw up my pickup,” she tells him, roughly grabbing him by the shoulder when he staggers for the second time. He’s pliant, and she realizes something’s wrong.

“I told you, you have to eat something!”

The man is lightheaded, nearly faint, and she settles him against a tree, taking the Child from his arms and setting him to one side. She gives him the same offer of food from the night before.

The helmet shakes roughly on his head, heavy pants coming from the underside of it, ragged and uneven. “No,” he says, and it’s nearly lost in static.

Cara grumbles, adjusts her pack and the rifle on her shoulders.

It’s cool in the shade, and there’s a light breeze that ruffles the tree leaves. But the Mandalorian is stubborn as ever. Shaking himself, beskar rattling, he tries to stand again, and for a second Cara thinks that maybe it’s passed; but then, the man leans too heavily to one side.

“Your blood sugar is dropping,” she tells him, gripping his bicep. He feels sturdy in her grip, but there’s a slight tremble there.

“I’m fine.” It’s a growl. “I won’t t-take…it off.”

“I don’t care how ugly you are under there, you gotta eat.” She rips open her pack, finds her water flagon and passes it to him.

“No.” His head jerks sharply and he’s taking steps away from her.

“Dammit, Mando!” Cara grimaces at him. “When that shuttle leaves, you and I are on it, if I have to force you to eat something.”

The helmet is unforgivably vacant. Cara can only see her warped reflection in it, dewy and red faced with her vexation. She can feel his eyes roaming her, assessing her.

“Seems we are at an impasse,” he tells her with a wan exhale.

Cara bites her tongue, the gears of her mind churning. “Nobody can see your face, right?”

He nods, economically – just the once.

“Then I won’t see your face.” With a roughhewn growl, Cara digs in her pack, pulls out a rag used for weapons cleaning and begins folding it over a few times. “Will this do? I keep my blaster on you. But you’re going to eat something if I have to kill you myself.”

Clumsily, because neither trust each other, she sits on his knees. If he tried to run, he wouldn’t get far in his state; if she peeked, he would be able to tell. The kid is nearby, he’s wandered away, perhaps more aware of the situation than either give him credit. He’s pursuing a passing insect into the swampy tree line, hasn’t bothered to pay attention to the adults as soon as they sat down for the break.

“Can you see?” He asks her once the blindfold is in place.

She shakes her head. Under the rag it’s dark, the material is lightweight, but entirely opaque. Blind, she’s aware this is far too intimate. Even for her level of comfort, and she was a soldier, but she’d be kriffed if she comprised her bounty for even a second. She now wishes she came up with a better plan, because she can feel his sturdy legs under her thighs, precisely where the scratchy material of his pants meets polished armor.

“No trouble,” she reminds him, tapping the bit of her blaster into his hip.

All she can hear is his unsteady breathing. His wrists are still bound, and he’s inept at getting the flask of water open. But then, there are the sounds of a strange hissing noise and a clunk, followed by very obvious chugging and splashing.

“Don’t drink all of it!” She seethes, but it’s lost the normal level of vehemence reserved for dealing with troublesome bounties.

He’s dehydrated too. When the Mandalorian comes up for air, heavy puffs hit her face.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he snorts when she tightens her thighs around him. “You’re sitting on my legs.” It sounds…different. Lighter somehow, but still grating.

Cara wishes for a pint of spotchka, if only to cover the pink color blooming across her cheeks.

“What are your tattoos?” The Mandalorian asks her, chewing loudly. Apparently, he has absolutely no manners when it comes to dining in someone’s presence.

“I’m a veteran.” It comes out a touch too forced. “I was wounded. Honorably discharged. I was a drop soldier. They’d send us in when they wanted it fast and quiet. No support, just us. Then when the Imps were gone, the politics started. We were peacekeepers, protecting delegates, suppressing riots. My platoon was hit by a surprise attack while escorting some diplomats –”

The memory of it is murky, and her jaw clamps shut with a loud clack.

It’s the blindfold, she justifies, that’s why she opened her damn mouth. The darkness is yielding, drawing her barriers down.

The man she’s sitting on top of makes a quiet hum in the back of his throat. She feels him breathing.

“They’ll kill me, you know,” he says, quietly. “As soon as you turn me over.”

If he's trying for sympathy, it doesn't work on her. “Not my problem," she snorts.

“Says the woman," he chews, "who’s ensuring that a man get his final meal.”

“You're my pay day. My _concern_ ” – and maybe she twists the end of the blaster into his hip harder than she meant – “ends as soon as those credits are mine. So I can have a few drinks, maybe a nice fuck and never have to think about you ever again.”

“That always work for you?"

"Always works," she parrots with a tight smile. "You're just another bounty. It's nothing personal."

It’s awhile before he says anything again. “Maybe there’s a way we can both get what we want.”

The blindfold can’t hide the sneer Cara’s lips make. “What’s that?”

“A compromise.” The flask is being emptied into his mouth again.

“I don’t do those.”

“Take _me_ back, but we leave the Child.”

Her derision is obvious. “You two are a package deal.”

“They’ll kill me with or without him. You’ll get paid. I’ll make sure of it.” He’s stern, direct, but there’s a certain gravity to his voice that begins to break. “Just don’t…”

He clears his throat, too loudly for her liking, sitting so close. She’s jostled slightly as he adjusts his legs under her, so she digs the blaster deeper into his hip. The message loud and clear.

“Look,” he continues, “whatever the Imps want with him, he doesn’t deserve it…some kind of science experiment, I don’t know. That’s no life for a kid. There’s a small area, not far from here. Krill farmers. Remote, middle of nowhere. They came to me about a week ago asking for help, and I turned down a job. Maybe they’ll be looking to bargain. They said they have families, children.”

Cara remembers her vision. The farmers. The krill ponds. She’s skeptical. Those red eyes have her wanting to get off this planet as quickly as possible.

“I’m not missing my transport…”

“We can take my ship. I’ll fly you to Nevarro myself,” he says.

Cara rudely snorts her disbelief.

The Mandalorian is persistent – another character flaw perhaps. “I’ll go with you, willingly. No need for these.” The binders shake as he raises his wrists. “ _If_ , we leave the Child,” he reaffirms.

Willingly? Cara considers this. She’s never had a bounty asked to be taken in willingly. Details being as spotty as they are, she still doesn’t trust him.

She frowns, missing the point. “Why so eager to be killed?”

The Mandalorian heaves a wistful sigh, loaded with something too familiar to her that she’s afraid to give it a name. “Maybe I’m done being hunted.”

She mishears, thinks he said haunted.

“On my honor as a Mandalorian,” and he’s much too calm to be trading his life over like this. “And you can get your drink and your…good fuck as you say. And never think of me again.”

She can hear the obvious judgement for her choices in his voice, and his disdainful sigh ghosts over her face and she’s jamming her blaster right into where she guesses his throat is. Her aim is somewhat correct, for she earns a discomfited grunt from the Mandalorian.

“Don’t get familiar,” she threatens, low and dangerously because men use this kind of information against her. There’s a sound, like a small chuckle, but it’s breathy, could be mistaken for another sigh.

“I’m feeling better now,” he says finally. There’s a scraping of metal and then he adds in a clipped tone: "What do you say?”

It’s metallic sounding, so she knows she’s in the clear. When she rips the fabric off her eyes, the visor of his helm is locked on her, mirroring her own expression of ferocity.

* * *

Teenage Lyssa looks like her mother when she's angry - scowling lips, and an intense dark sheen to her amber eyes. Fierce and ferocious. It's like Cara's looking in a mirror.

"I won't," Lyssa stomps her foot. "I don't _want_ to leave Sorgan. All my friends are here. You can't make me. I hate that school already."

"Sweetie, you don't know that - your dad and I think -"

"No! I'm not going! I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, and I hate _you_!" Lyssa screams and she slams the door to her bunk shut.

Cara winces. Wonders where she ever went wrong in her parenting.

* * *

The sack of coins that lands at Cara’s feet is barely enough to cover her lunch money, let alone considered a decent fee for her services, but the gratitude of the villagers is overwhelming. It’s beginning to get to Cara, because when the Mandalorian asks for his blaster back, she returns it. Thinks she must have gotten her head knocked in when she fought him in their first round.

“A deal’s a deal,” the Mandalorian says, sheathing his weapon. “We take care of the raiders, leave the kid, and then we go back to Nevarro.” A repeat of the promise he’s already made.

Cara’s not sure what deity in the whole universe made her comfortable with this. Perhaps it was the strange workings of the Child. A shiver runs through Cara whenever she looks at it, playing and giggling with the other village children.

Her dreams tell her not to trust this forest, even in all its peacefulness. There’s a flock of blackbirds cawing at each other above them, flapping their wings and squawking at the intruders into their neck of the woods. Their presence puts a dark aura over the tranquility, adds to Cara’s uneasiness. It feels like a fluttering under her skin, like she’s stretched too tightly to stay in one piece, in one place. Time passes like tree sap on this planet. She barely registers the passage of the sun overhead, the dim shadow of the two moons in the blue sky. A fly passes near her face and she swats her hand out, intending to kill it, but it buzzes by her ear, missing her hair.

Just as her dreams tell her, they do find something in the woods. There’s a marking in the path of a large footprint. Cara recognizes it first.

“AT-ST,” she mutters darkly.

“Imperial walker,” the Mandalorian agrees. “What’s it doing here?”

“I don’t know. But this is more than I signed up for.”

Before they leave to deliver the bad news, Cara holds a wad of dirt in her bare fist, feeling for the fading signature.

_A clack of metal and heavy footfalls. She can hear the grunts of the Klatooninian raiders, armed to the teeth, their backs loaded with their stolen goods. They’re feral, growling and chanting on some post-raid high. The winding of a gunner and red unblinking eyes._

The images swerve and fade away and Cara’s head spins. The Mandalorian stands over her, cutting an arresting figure, sunlight striking off the metal of his helmet and she’s momentarily blinded. She puts her hand up to block the reflected light. There is dirt under her fingernails.

The forest rustles all around them, alive and listening.

* * *

“You cannot fight that thing.”

She’d seen them in action. Seen them take out whole villages twice the size of this one, battalions of armies in minutes. Cara’s bitterness hardens, merges into anger. The villagers are stubborn, arguing they don’t want to leave. Their whole lives are here, from the time their grandparents seeded those pods. None want to leave.

It’s the Mandalorian that breaks through the chatter. “Unless we show them how.”

She catches up to him in the barn afterwards, sticks her blaster under the lip of his helmet. “This was _not_ part of the plan,” she seethes, bristling with anxiety, hot with fury. She wants to bind his wrists again, knock him out and drag him away: get the hell out and claim her reward.

He offers his wrists. “Take me in then. Let’s go. And we’ll leave these defenseless people behind.”

He’s found a way to wind his words under her simmering skin. She can’t remember when anyone had such an effect on her.

“What’s another AT-ST for a soldier like you,” he adds with a hint of a challenge.

“ _Ex_ -soldier,” she hisses.

Cara knows herself. She won’t back down from the suggestion in his tone. The prospect of the fight is too tempting, especially with one of those. This Mandalorian knows that, knows how to stroke her ego. And she’ll let him.

Cara growls, rips the blaster away. “There are others looking for him and they’ll find you before the week is out. You’ll see.”

Any nuance of expression is lost. He’s inscrutable, imposingly so against the backdrop of the rundown barn. In a moment of weakness, Cara considers lowering her defenses just enough to seek his feelings. It’s the first time she’s considered such a violation. Untrained in the finesse of this trick, it can feel like a strong current, the onslaught of emotions overwhelming, and if she’s not careful, there may be a breach. She has to be centered, and her hostility against this man is too strong, an overcompensation because she cannot control this narrative anymore. Much like the unintentional connection she made with the Child, there may be a consequence – a lingering aftertaste of _him_ mixed within her own soul.

Instead, she squares her shoulders and stalks out of the barn, intending to clear her head.

A local woman, Omera, is coming up the steps. She has a gentleness about her, and kind eyes and an obvious soft spot for the man in metal hide a woman underneath that has seen the callousness of the world. She raises her child, Winta, alone. Cara almost wishes for the sensibility in which Omera carries herself, as if grace and delicacy were born from her own presence.

The tray of food she carries is no doubt for _him_. “Can I bring you some spotchka? You know, we really appreciate that you’re agreeing to help us,” Omera says, her eyes are so _giving_. “It means a lot to us.”

She follows Cara’s gaze, resting on the kid, now chasing after a frog, much to the crowd’s delight. “He’s special that one,” Omera points out, as if no one else knew it too.

Cara isn’t one to share confidences with people she’s just met. In a better mood, she might admit that she admires Omera. But Cara feels like a woman resisting the whole galaxy. She’ll take that spotchka, if only to lighten that burden.

* * *

_She dreams someone is kissing between her legs._

_She dreams of a warm body pulling her closer, closer, until she is consumed by it, until she cannot sense where she ends and the other begins. Of lips and teeth and tongues. Of silky fine hair bunched in her fists, of a tickling along her thigh, her knee._

_She dreams of a pleasure so great she wants to crawl inside this feeling forever. Hold the moon and the sky in their place for the rest of Time. For the water never to run, for the wind never to blow, for the whole galaxy to come to a standstill, suspended in this exact moment, so she can sink under that feeling, let her body be melted down, let her soul be deified._

_She dreams of darkness._

_When he kisses along the great uncharted territory that is her body, born anew, he commands her: “Open your eyes.”_

_And she does._

* * *

It’s another brilliant sunny morning on Sorgan when Cara awakes, disappointed.

Nevarro feels like lightyears ago, and sometimes, when she watches the sunset on the krill ponds, reflecting the clear skies above, it feels like another life entirely. She knows how old this universe is, she wonders how many sunsets and sunrises she’s gone through, how many times the universe has started and ended, reversed and rewound, restarted over and reset each time, until finally, finally, she gets it right.

(She wonders if the Mandalorian was ever entwined in those parallel lives, those rebirths, and those deaths. But that’s a fleeting thought, dangerous even, pushed into the Outer Rim of her consciousness, dare never to return.)

They’re stealthy as the sun goes down. Just two soldiers in the woods. Her senses are sharp, perhaps her sleep has helped in that regard. They’ve been muddled, conflicted lately, to the point that she feels betrayed by her own instincts. Her chance at a payday and the glory of returning with the bound Mandalorian seem like a pipe dream. For Cara Dune, Bounty Hunter (Guild Commissioned) never walks away from the promise of coin.

Between the combined tracking skills of two bounty hunters, the Klatooinan camp is not hard to find. For one wearing so much armor, he moves swiftly. They see two raiders sitting out on watch duty, but they’re easily dispatched. Cara and the Mandalorian use the shadows to their advantage; hunters moving in sync as if formed from the same mind.

As he sets his charge, she hears something, whistles to get his attention. They’re ready.

Cara’s blood is hot as they fight. She almost laughs out loud when one raider gets her square on the jaw. Oh, she _loves_ this part. That first build of energy, that sudden spike in her adrenaline, her eyes gleaming, shining like stars on a black, black night. She hears a clang and knows he’s been taken down.

She senses the loading of the blaster and ducks for cover before the rifle is shot.

“C’mon, I’ll cover you,” he says, shooting out the back entrance.

Cara doesn’t hesitate, dives right out into the night, throwing her arms up to cover her face. They barely make it a few yards out of the way when the explosion rips up the sky. The shock wave sends them flying into the forest floor.

Rolling and spiting dirt out of her mouth, she turns cheekily to the Mandalorian, backlit by the orange flames. “I hope the plan worked.”

And that’s when she feels it, like a brunt jab to her body: _him_. Somewhere in the fighting, the coursing adrenaline, her own hot-blooded power overtook her, and her defenses slipped, shifted, and stretching towards her, coming in waves off him…

Her senses flared with the new input. The most obvious undercurrent is anger, it’s like a fine line running through him – bold and brash it must have once stood out; but now seems faded, crusted with age and fatigue. She feels his tired and sore limbs, and somehow, from somewhere primal and deep is his need to keep fighting, to keep moving - a persistence, a determination born out of something so small she didn’t have a name for it, but it feels like a soft, fluttering pulse, as if she were holding a small bird in her caged hands.

It’s a rather incomplete outline: the roughhewn edges masking a vulnerable, scared child, torrents of sadness, melancholy, with few sparks of joy and lightness – those seem reserved, much deeper – held together by the core of loneliness. Just like with the Child, she senses how deeply that small creature has upended his rigidness, his stoicism, made him protective, sensitive towards it. And just like when she touched the Child’s head, the wall of emotions cleared, retreated back into him, but were now falling like ash in Cara’s soul, intermingling with her own memories and feelings.

It’s so startling, but it’s over before it begins. Blinking back the tide of tears that threatened to spill, she blearily makes out two red dots reflected in his beskar forehelm. Then the ground trembles.

* * *

Lyssa is working on a project with the utmost determination. Her brows are furrowed, and the edge of her tongue is sticking out. She is most like her father in this fashion: sole-minded focus and utter relentlessness. It’s uncanny, and absolutely adorable. Cara twines a dark curl on her daughter’s head between her fingers.

“Whatcha workin’ on, love?”

The marker in the little girl’s hand stills. “A drawing for daddy when he comes home.”

“Oh yeah?” She tries to peek over her shoulder. “Of what?”

The girl quickly turns the drawing over, but Cara sees a flash of colors: green and grey, browns, and reds. “It’s a surprise!” She trills. “Don’t look! I’m not done yet. It’s a picture of mommy and daddy fighting the bad guys.”

“I think he’ll love that,” Cara laughs and steals a kiss on her daughter’s cheek.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes writing is hard. This story is a challenge. Thank you for your patience.  
> Kudos and comments appreciated.  
> Warnings: canon typical violence, excessive drinking, and dirty language.

“Ensign Dune, reporting for duty, sir,” Cara saluted her Lieutenant, a purple-lekkus Togruta by the name of Zed.

“No need for such formalities, soldier,” Zed’s crooked smile was warm. They saluted back though, but quickly dropped into a casual stance. “Thought you were still on home leave?”

Cara’s shoulders dropped just a fraction, but she quickly recovered. “I’m not one for R&R.”

Zed hummed, while swiping through a datapad. “Your record is…impressive, Dune. Confirmed kills count is off the charts…I’ve never seen such…precision. The General tells me you’re looking to transfer. Tell me, why do you want to be a shock trooper?”

Cara’s focus is on the Rebellion lapel on her Lieutenant’s jacket. The same insignia that now resides on Cara’s face. The skin around the ink still stung and was tender, having only just paid the last of her credits for it the night before. Only after thinking that downing four glasses of Corellian red in a row seemed like a good idea. Cara caught the way the Lieutenant’s eyes flickered briefly to look at the new tattoo, proudly crafted, permanently, on her left cheek.

“Maybe I just like killin’ Imps,” Cara deadpanned.

Lieutenant Zed was less impressed with her dry humor. A muscle in the Lieutenant’s jaw ticked. “You’re from Alderaan.”

It was not a question. Cara answered in the positive anyway. She clicked the heels of her boots together, stared at a spot just over her C.O.’s shoulder. “Sir, yes, sir.”

“Drop soldiers are an elite line of defense. You go in, you’re on your own out there. This is war, Ensign. The Empire is not interested in your revenge. The politics are changing, our engagements will turn to peacekeeping when this is all over. Hardly a place to carry out your personal vendettas.”

“All due respect, sir,” Cara replies, her eyes were positively sparkling when they caught her Lieutenant’s curious gaze. “The way I see it, there isn’t much difference between justice and vengeance these days.”

* * *

“Go. Go!”

They’re running. Cara’s blindly following the shiny bucket of his helm in the night. The ground shakes with the heavy footfalls of the gunner gaining behind him.

Feeling the eyes of the great machinery behind them, she grabs the back of the Mandalorian’s cape. He chokes, stumbles and crashes into her and they fall down a small hill. A red streak passes overhead. Right where they were both standing moments before.

“What the hell, Dune?” He yells at her when they sit up. He's rubbing his sore neck where the material of his cape chafed him.

“Saved your metal ass!” She snarks back.

Another streak sets fire to a small bush nearby. They take off running.

If he wants to thank her, he doesn’t have time to for the AT-ST is quickly on their heels. The air is superheating around them, lighting up with sparks. They wind their way back to the village, weaving in and out to avoid blaster shots, leading up to the lone path that falls between the paths where their trap is set.

They both jump and duck behind the barricade, waiting with bated breaths as the sounds of the AT-ST approach.

* * *

Laughing, Cara downed another heavy gulp of her drink. “I’m telling you I can’t feel it.”

The lines around her bicep are already halfway done. Vera and Isak, the twins, were with her, giggling and tipsy but they look queasily at the tattoo being etched into her skin by the Ithorian artist working the large needle. Neither were daring enough to get their own.

“Kinda tickles actually,” she said, scrunching her nose at her comrades.

A group of soldiers sauntered pass their merry little group and Isak, recognizing one, called him over.

“Hey Keegs, come check out the balls on this chick!” Isak yelled across the crowded spaceport. Cara made a show of rolling her eyes at Vera, who just punches Isak, deservedly on his arm in jest.

“Carasynthia Dune, as I live and breathe,” the soldier exclaimed upon recognizing the woman in the Ithorian’s parlor chair.

“Keegan,” Cara greeted coolly, the ice in her Twister clinking as she raised the glass to her lips.

“Thought your team had already shipped out,” Keegan crossed his arms, making the sleeves of his T-shirt nearly burst over his mighty biceps. Cara was glad for the cold drink.

“Shuttle leaves first thing in the morning,” she answered.

Isak and Vera started gabbing on excitedly about their next mission. Keegan invited the group to a party over in Hangar-B.

Cara hissed as the needle passes onto the sensitive skin under her arm, and she tilted her head to inspect the new line of color, marking her loyalty to the droppers. The tattoo prickles, and her body felt hot, and it was not just the way Keegan is looking at her. She has a soft spot for men with vulnerable brown eyes and it’s been some years since she’s seen this particular man. Cara hid a smirk by tilting the glass all the way back, her drink spilling into her eager mouth.

* * *

When the red eyes of walker are spotted through the tree line, Cara’s gut sinks like a tanker under water. This is exactly what her dreams warned her of, and here she is in the unforgiving line of fire.

“Weapons ready!” She shouts to the villagers.

The AT-ST blunders through the tree line, knocking down their defenses with ease.

“Just a few more steps,” the Mandalorian mutters to her.

Cara’s grinding her teeth, watching it make the slow approach. “It stopped.”

They duck under the bright white light as it scopes over the landscape. Then the night lights up under a red shot of blaster fire and orange sparks. The first shot has been fired.

“Open fire!” Cara yells and her vocal cords strain to be heard above the din of destruction.

But their plan is falling apart. The AT-ST is stubbornly fixated just ahead of their trap.

“We gotta get that thing to step forward,” the Mandalorian says gruffly.

“I’m thinking.” And she travels.

* * *

The party on Hangar-B is crowded with other soldiers, everyone’s rubbing shoulders, drinks were spilling, some galactic radio station blasted music. Keegan’s focus was on Cara, for he kept shooting her heated looks. It made Cara’s belly tingle, simmering sweetly as she sipped her booze.

“I saw something on the holonet,” Vera said, chewing on the lip of her cup. “Crazy stories outta Endor.”

Isak shook with mirth. “Shoulda seen how they took out these AT-STs.”

“Ewoks, right,” Keegan began to explain, catching Cara’s gaze, “think oversized teddy bears, okay?”

Isak and Vera burst into identical laughter. Cara smiled over her drink, painting the ridiculous picture in her head.

Keegan’s smile was wide, his pearly white teeth shining. His lips were plush. Cara remembers he’s also a good kisser. “Shoulda seen the traps these Ewoks set – those AT-STs, were rendered useless—"

“By slingshots,” Isak drunkenly mimed.

“Made us look ridiculous! All our counter-intelligence, all our research on ops and strategies for taking out these machines – I’m talking _months_ of sims, trainings, weapons development engineered to launch grenades at these armored things…and we get shown up in a matter of hours by – by…”

“Teddy bears?” Cara offered with a shit-eating grin.

“Armed with sticks and stones,” Keegan said with a snort. “It’s genius though,” he continues, once the group has dissolved into fits of laughter. “No, no, hear me out.”

“Yeah, let’s go toe-to-toe against the Imps,” Vera’s mocking tone was directed right at Keegan, “with bow and arrows? _Puh-_ lease.”

Keegan only shrugged, passing another bottle around and topping off everyone’s drink. The mass of bodies pulsed around them, jostling with the crowd of soldiers, many about to shipped off for good. Cara’s senses bristled with the heady rush of mixed emotions, she felt the overstimulated aura of anxiety and adrenaline, the intoxicating mix of youth and idealism coupled with strong drinks, spiked arousals, and nervous energy. There are many in Hangar-B that felt as if they stood on the edge of a great precipice, heading into an uncertain dawn.

“You wanna beat the Imperials?” Keegan ardently asked the group. “Well, do ya?”

Isak and Vera traded noncommittal glances, bored already with the conversation. Keegan’s dark gaze landed on the insignia underneath Cara’s left cheek. He parted his mouth with his tongue, while his eyes danced on her face. The felt the force of his provocation, fiery and breathless.

“Fuck yeah,” Cara answered. The only one with balls.

Keegan ducked his head closer to her, his warm breath fanning across her face. “Then, don’t play by their rules.”

* * *

Cara watches while the Mandalorian loads a cartridge into his rifle and take out a Klatooinian raider some yards away. The villagers are putting up quite the fight. All they have are sticks and stones.

“New plan,” she says suddenly, sheathing her blaster. Her head is already rewriting the rules of battle.

“What do you have in mind?”

She remembers Keegan. She heard not long after that night of the party on Hanger-B that his heli went down and he’s been presumed dead ever since. She remembers the twins, Isak and Vera. As far as she knows they’re now serving under New Republic colors.

She remembers the gods-awful music someone was playing that night. That Vera kept filling Cara’s cup with more alcohol, and she kept sipping it slowly, slowly, drunk off the company of the others. The dread and the excitement of the morning call when the shuttle picks them up filling her belly. She remembers Isak trying to dance and laughing at his atrocious attempts at flirting. The slight itch of the new tattoo on her arm. The superheated flutters in her gut when Keegan – his broad shoulders, his dark eyes – dipped lowly to say to her “let’s get out of here, yeah?” and takes her hand.

The air on Sorgan smells of sulfur and blaster fire. Her memories fade, retreating with such suddenness it’s like whiplash.

Sticks and stones.

She puts her hand out. She’s not playing by their rules anymore. “Gimme the pulse rifle.”

He hands it over, not even a second of hesitation. “I’ll cover you.”

She’s thinking of the sniper attack that took out her platoon. The very one that nearly killed her. The healed wound on her side reminds her, with a throb, of its presence – now a faded scar that’s healed with time. Someone shoulda been on her six that day. Everything might have turned out differently then. She might be fighting a very different battle.

The AT-ST is taken out with a single shot. (“Come to mama,” Cara cooed, aimed, and fired.) The Mandalorian ran and threw his charge into the heap of junk.

He’s next to her in the pond. She’s barely registered his presence until he asks her, with a hint of a laugh: “Was that the plan?”

For the first time since her discharge from the Rebellion, she laughs and it’s genuine. This satisfaction feels different, new and ardent. It’s like the first dive into a pool, shocking on hot skin.

“Somethin’ like that.”

She smells like krill; they both do, and he lends her a hand pulling her out of the pond. Her boots squelch with mud and she’s carefree for the adrenaline high is better than any drug. She carries his rifle; he hasn’t asked for it back, and she swings it gallantly over her shoulders as they saunter back to the rest of the villagers.

They’ve won the day. The villagers are cheering each other as the Klatooinians, seeing their defeat, scatter into the woods. But there’s a small bitter pill that Cara is finding she has yet to swallow. While the villagers invite their saviors to celebrate, Cara shakes her head and stalks off, preferring to be alone in the night.

She feels someone staring at her retreating back, heading to her own quarters. When she scans the crowd for the source of that feeling, it’s gone.

* * *

_Someone puts a hand over her eyes, presses against her back._

_“I can bring you in warm, or I can bring you in cold?”_

_It makes her body shiver in anticipation. A familiar heat starts in her loins, curdles the air, musky and dewy. Her smile turns devilish. She’s missed his touch, finds herself craving it. Her mouth waters._

_“Ooh, I could take you apart in five. Bring me in hot.”_

* * *

The Mandalorian is standing in the threshold to her room. The blackness of the night is with him. She can see the outline of stars on the crown of his helm.

“Come for your rifle?” It’s leaning against the wall by the door.

He takes a step into her quarters. Cara moves backwards, and her calf hits the low partition of her temporary bed. She shouldn’t be afraid of him, but now, alone in the small confine of her room, she is.

Her body is formless next to him. He’s so formidable, she feels as if the surface of her skin shrinks under his gaze, intensely narrowed to her. The slits of his visor like the unfeeling probe of a droid. For all his hatred of those inanimate things, he acts like one. His footfalls are heavy as he crosses another few paces into her space, and Cara’s control ebbs even further away. The hairs on her neck rise.

“You’ve held up your end of the bargain,” he says.

She’d nearly forgotten. The smell of her own body steeped in the bog offends her, and her nostrils flare.

“Now I’ll hold up mine,” he offers his hands, palms up, displaying no weapons. “Omera’s already agreed to look after the—”

Cara’s anger, once lapsed, now surges forward and she cuts him off, spitting. “Forget it, the deal’s off!”

The Mandalorian stands so stationary she can barely see him breathing. A ghost, or a statue. An empty silver suit in the black night.

“I’m not doing it,” she continues. “I won’t hand you over to the Imps. Not you or the – the kid.” That last part comes out watery. So, Cara doubles down on her posturing, and her chin tilting higher in the air, the line of her jaw tightening.

It’s an eternity that elapses. The silence between them is so stark, the only thing that dares disrupt it is the far-off sounds of the continued celebrations of the villagers.

“You hear me, Mando!” She barks, like an animal cornered, licking her wounds. “You’re free to go.”

“What about your payday?” It’s not a question she expects.

She shrugs one shoulder, avoids his visor, pinned resolutely on her. “P’rolly going to stiff me on the payment anyway,” she mutters darkly. “Stingy bastards.”

She’s not sure if it’s her pride she’s mourning, or something else because she feels like crying but holds her own against the tidal wave inside her. An entire ocean in open rebellion.

“What will you do?”

“I’ll be fine on my own. Always have been.” It’s accompanied by a pained huff. “You and I both know he’s safer with you. They’ll keep coming for him.”

The Mandalorian gives one direct, curt nod in acknowledgement. It lands like a backhand across the face to Cara. She wants some reaction, any kriffing reaction outta him that isn’t laced with a modicum of decorum, that isn’t every fiber of his being ruled by restraint and control. She wants him unhinged; she wants him let loose; she wants, she wants, she wants. It’s the adrenaline.

He gives nothing away. Only his upper body turns away from her, but his boots are rooted to the spot, primed for something.

“Thank you.” It’s so soft and stiff, she has to strain to hear him. An awkwardness suddenly overtakes his sullen stature. He’s no droid. Entirely human after all.

Cara can only feel the stolid beat of her own heart in her ribcage. She can’t feel him. But she knows he’s being genuine, _means_ it and that somehow feels more terrifying. She doesn’t want his sympathy.

“Whatever,” she mutters with a scowl. But she’s alone in her own misery, her own remorse.

* * *

“Senaar’ika,” she hears, “go apologize to your mother.”

“But da-aad,” Lyssa drags the vowel out into multiple syllables with a whine. Nevertheless, she is her father’s little girl, and thus obedient. A few moments pass and Cara hears the drag of Lyssa’s feet traipsing over to where Cara is sitting on the porch, watching the sunset over the lush forest of Sorgan.

Lyssa is fourteen years old, nearly a young woman. Cara is shocked by the passage of time, by how quickly the years have traversed. They once spread out before her, seemingly infinite, and then, taking her by surprised, shuttered, leapt and bound, jumping in fits and spurts, passing in a blink of an eye. Just yesterday it seems Cara was rocking the babe in her arms, breastfeeding Lyssa.

Time is a fickle thing. But so are Cara’s memories.

Lyssa is kicking the slats of the porch, her hands behind her back. Cara looks upon her child who is no longer a child.

“I don’t hate you, momma,” Lyssa sniffles.

“I know, I know, little bird. C’mere.” Lyssa sits at her mother’s feet, lays her head upon Cara’s knee. Cara pets the wild, untamed curls of the dark hair. “All is forgiven.”

* * *

When the Mandalorian leaves with the Child, Cara feels hollow. She doesn’t know why. She can already feel their absence, the air has less of a sting to it. No acrid aftertaste of metal; the briny scent of the Child is lost in the wind.

Nevarro was no home. So, she delays. Weeks pass and shuttle after shuttle take off, and Cara Dune, Bounty Hunter misses each of them.

Her dreams are no less tame, her mind no less empty. When she walks in the forests of Sorgan, she’s reminded of a place far away, made of nothing but dust. While that floods her with a sharp pang, it’s been dulled over the years. Such memories of Alderaan – grass stains on her kneecaps, leafy canopies, bare feet in grass, the turning leaves of autumn, the smell of her mother’s cooking, lake water in her ears, a tea kettle whistling – are no longer lethal. While they don’t send her spiraling anymore, they are still hard to forget. Occasionally they will linger, and Cara will surprise even herself, remembering suddenly a little song she sang with her school group, the lyrics coming back in perfect harmony in the hazy moments between waking and sleeping, only to disappear again.

For Alderaan is everywhere that Cara is.

Then the day comes when she runs out of credits. So, she sees the biggest guy in the room – a Zabrak male with small horns atop his head – and she says, “that one,” because she might not have any money, she might not have any friends, but part of Cara Dune is still a shock trooper, and just like they used to say about her, she does have balls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Senaar’ika - little bird


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank all of you who have left kudos and comments. They mean the absolute world to me. You guys are amazing. So here's another installment. much love. Expect updates about every two weeks or so, depending on my writing schedule.
> 
> this one is a bit of a filler chapter, more stuff coming soon!!  
> WARNINGS: canon-typical violence, but with more gore, language, and drinking.  
> 

“Wait! Wait Wait!” Ten-year-old Lyssa kicks the bedsheets off her feet. “Where do I come into this story, momma?”

“Not for a long time,” Cara chuckles.

“Skip ahead to those parts.”

Cara gives her daughter a mock-stern look. “If you know this story so well, next time you can tell it. Besides, it’s _way_ past your bedtime now. So, we’ll have to finish this tomorrow.”

“But – but that’s so far away,” Lyssa whines, “and I’m not even…I’m not even tired.”

Then, Lyssa heaves a giant yawn.

Cara gathers the snubbed bedsheets at the end of the bed and covers the little girl, tucking in the corners and fluffing the pillows. She makes sure to put the stuffed bantha by Lyssa’s head, in case it wants cuddles later in the night.

“Momma,” Lyssa yawns again. Cara hums, kissing the soft cheek. “Tomorrow can I go to the lake with ad’ika and go swimming?”

“Sure, just don’t let him eat too many frogs.”

“And, and, and momma? Don’t forget…we’ll finish – tomorrow.” Lyssa’s eyelids can’t stay open. “Wanna know how it ends.”

“You know how it ends,” Cara kisses each eye as they close. The small impish face relaxing as sleep envelops Lyssa. “Sweet dreams, little bird.”

* * *

The Zabrak’s fist is primed for her nose. That’s when Cara feels it, a flutter of wings by her ear. All time seems to come to a standstill.

Without turning her head, she focuses on it. Nothing else in the whole galaxy feels like that small creature. The briny smell of a ceaseless ocean overwhelms her, like Cara’s taken a wet stone on Alderaan’s sandy beaches and licked it. The Child feels her, responds by sending out a pulse; it’s a welcoming, a hello, or an extended embrace. Cara shivers. In the span of a second, it all passes and then Cara feels _him_. The other.

The Mandalorian’s presence is grounding. Earthy tones of cracked, worn leather and burnished metal root deep. The very light cannot stay too long on him, both attracting and repelling, moving with him – a spotlight that wavers – and his long, purposeful but patient strides across the room. She thought she had untethered herself, had incised him from her very being.

The Zabrak’s fist collides and Cara hears a crack, feels a shooting pain in the center of her face. Blood runs down her nose and she sees stars.

_A TIE fighter zooms across her vision. An army of Imperials. A man in all black standing at the very center of it. “Burn them out,” he says._

She falls at the base of the bar. The laser tether crackles between her and the Zabrak fighter. She ducks under his next attack, knocks against his side, a kick, and another punch to the face. When he pulls at the tether belt, Cara’s jostled forward, her head snapping with whiplash.

_She’s clutching someone’s hand, “let me have a warrior’s death,” they say. And her whole being screams out against it. A boat being ferried down an underground river of lava. There is a light at the end of a long tunnel, and then an explosion._

She gains the advantage and pins the Zabrak underneath her, wrapping the laser cord around his neck and pulling until he taps out.

Elated, she raises her arms above her head. The blood is a river down her face. Victory tastes like iron. “Pay up mudscuffers! C’mon that’s mine. Thank you. All right, thank _you_.”

Victory feels like coins in her hand.

She saunters over to her corner table. Relaxing into the chair, Cara’s tongue laves at her bloodied bottom lip. The glass of spotchka isn’t being refilled quickly enough.

“Looking for some work?” He is taller than she remembers. She kicks the chair nearest her and it scuttles out from under the table, nearly bumps at the Mandalorian’s knee. An invitation.

She taunts him with a jolly look, then downs the whole pint of spotchka in one go. It mixes with the blood on her chin.

The Mandalorian lifts the Child and places him on the seat Cara has offered.

“Thought I told you not to come back,” she tells him. The ghosts of her family and friends hover on the edges of her vision. Nobody ever comes back.

“I believe your precise words were ‘you’re free to go’,” the Mandalorian counters with arid humor.

The obsidian eyes of the Child move from the pile of coin on the table to take in her figure, blinking slowly, studying her. She sees something in them, something like the dusting of stars on a clear night overhead. A knowing twinkle of the whole galaxy. It carves a hollowness in Cara’s being, her hardened exterior – weathered, battered, and refortified with time – erodes just a touch more. A handprint on stone formed over a millennium.

“Your nose is broken,” the Mandalorian remarks, as if it’s the most unremarkable, matter-of-fact thing.

“Oh really, I hadn’t noticed.”

The Mandalorian’s helmet shakes and she hears him sigh, exasperated or disapprovingly, she’s not sure. “Lemme fix it.”

And then he’s squatting between her parted legs and invading her personal space and Cara’s recoiling so fast the chair wobbles underneath her. Then, embarrassed, she recovers, and tries to relax.

“You showed me mercy once,” he says, gently, like he’s calming a skittish animal.

The examination is professional. He bends her chin, first one way and then the next, observing the damage in profile. There’s a sharp sting when his thumb traces the bridge to find the crack. Her breath snags, painfully, and a dribble of warm blood catches above her lip.

She remembers the time she sat on him in the forest of Sorgan. Blaster pressed into his hip. The cool span of beskar under her legs and the way he kept sighing, breath fanning across her face. Now, it’s his hands ghosting delicately, as imperceptibly as air. Her cheeks burn and she swallows noisily.

“Broken plenty of noses,” he mumbles, half to himself. He presses both his thumbs along the side of her nose, probing. “It’ll hurt less if you don’t see it coming.”

“Not in my experience—” she retorts, but it falls into an anguished scream because, with a tweak of his thumbs he resets it.

The pain is instant – a sudden and stabbing _throb_. Her eyes squeeze shut.

_A clang of beskar. A pool of blood on her hand. “You j-just got your bell rung.”_

A fresh torrent of blood spills anew and the Mandalorian is pressing a rag he’s pulled from his belt to her face, sopping up the mess.

“What the— _fuck_!” She seethes around the bloodied cloth, muffled, but her eyes blaze, black and furious.

His hand is back on her jaw, twisting her face to examine his work.

A cloud of visions paints over her eyes as she clutches the rag to her face, reading the signature bleeding through it.

 _A journey across a sea of sand and the blast of a rifle against beskar …the bitterness of betrayal …_ A _prison cell in a New Republic ship… more betrayal… A path of mayhem left in his wake…_ The visions halt when she drops the rag, and a smear of her own blood stains her palm.

His weakness is that he trusts too easily; the odor of the others’ disloyalty clings to him. With a stab of pity, she begins to understand why he might have returned here. Returned to her. A whole galaxy...trillions of lives…

“You could at least buy me a drink now,” she gasps with a pained grimace. Her nose hurts like karking banthashit and there’s a headache already forming behind her eyes.

The Mandalorian waves the barkeep over and another round of spotchka is poured.

She hocks a giant bloody loogie at the ground, wipes her chin. “Tell me about this job.”

“Seems like a straightforward operation,” the Mandalorian begins.

Hours later, by the time the spotchka has run out, the Child falls asleep – hunched over on himself, chin upon his chest, pillowed by his robes. Every once in a while, he emits a nasally snore.

Evening has settled over Sorgan. The hour is blue. In the mellow twilight, Cara forgets herself. There is no loneliness, no anger. Forgets that her existence is cursed with the constant dredging of a past that will forever haunt her, and the knowledge of the terrifying inevitability of the future.

“Why me?” she asks, not really expecting him to answer.

There is some kind of battle raging within him for he takes a long time to answer. His hands are restless in his lap. “It’s going to sound crazy.”

Cara arches a brow. “Try me metal man.”

“I had a dream,” he finally states. “N-not like that.” He rushes to explain before she can get a comment in edgewise. “It was – telling me to come back…to find you. I can’t explain it.”

A small knowing smile flutters at the edges of her lips. “That doesn’t sound crazy at all.”

He continues, more forcefully. “You’re a good soldier. A veteran.”

“I’ve been a lot of things since,” she admits. “Most of them carry a life sentence.”

He carries the fullness of his burdens with him, the past a heavy, unpainted-beskar reminder, whereas Cara’s burdens are buried within her, transparent and ethereal.

“You had the chance to turn us in,” he says, voice grating with time, with age and experience. He’s more suited to the dark, she thinks, beskar subdued in the twilight.

“But you chose differently,” he finishes with a resolute sigh.

When he turns his head, it is her own face she sees half in shadows, reflected in the smooth metal – a study of contrasts. The duality of woman.

* * *

Cara wakes to the cries of a babe. _Lyssa!_ She’s sits up in bed, her hand already patting the spot beside her. She’s shocked to find it empty. The dip in the pillow is still warm.

Sleepily, still bleary-eyed, she tiptoes out of bed towards the nursery. It’s a double moon that night on Sorgan, and Cara’s footsteps fall between the slats of moonlight coming in through the windows. She’s aware that ad’ika is sleeping, and so does not want to disturb him.

Lyssa’s father is already there. She can see the outline of his tall frame and his sleep-tousled hair, dark and thick. Lyssa is in his arms, and he’s rocking her, cradling the delicate face in his wide hands, placing milky-soft baby cheeks against his own.

Pausing at the door, eclipsed in shadows, Cara watches, unseen by him. He’s got his back to her. The lines of his broad shoulders visibly stretching under the thin white shirt he wears to bed. His body is powerful, but he handles the one-year old with tenderness edging on the divine.

Lyssa rubs the sleep out of her eyes with tiny fists. She cuddles closer to her father, sticks a thumb in her mouth. He’s speaking lowly to her, and his deep, baritone purr just reaches Cara’s ears.

“Senaar’ika,” he whispers, “want to see the stars with me?”

* * *

She’s not the most sentimental of persons, but she’s captivated. The sight is mesmerizing. Shuttles never exactly offered the same front row view. The deep black of space is punctuated only by the tiniest slivers and dots of light, blinking with vivid colors and textures. Each a promise of something so far away but so tangible at the same time.

Cara’s never had a view of the stars this close.

The Mandalorian is typing some sequence into the navi-comp. He’s been rather distant since bringing her aboard, awkward even. Slouching to and fro, gesticulating with stiff limbs at each item of potential interest: cargo doors, cargo hold, carbon freezer, vacc tube, cockpit, bunk space. He’s clearly unused to having someone in his personal space, his home – if one would be so forthcoming as calling a rather rundown piece of ancient history with the barest of essentials a “home.” While she hardly expects first class passage back to Nevarro, she would have preferred at least a door to the vacc-tube. But Cara’s fared worse, so she just nods along to his tour, throws her pack into a corner not covered in dust, and follows him up to the cockpit while he prepares the takeoff sequence.

The Child sits in a repurposed storage crate behind the pilot’s chair, chewing on some piece of hardware that Cara thinks must have belonged on the ship’s console at some point.

Turning away from the transparisteel and the views of the galaxy once they're space-bound, she takes up a seat behind her pilot and gets right down to business. “Does Karga know I’m coming?”

“Nope,” the Mandalorian pops the p.

“ _Really_? That might be a problem.”

She hadn’t told Karga about why she left. Hadn’t even said goodbye. She can’t imagine he’d be happy to see her.

“It won’t. And if it is,” the pilot’s chair spins and the Mandalorian faces her fully. “That’s his problem.”

She’s never revealed to anyone how she’s become such an adept hunter over these past few years. Never even had to carry a tracking fob. Luckily, this Mandalorian hasn’t noticed. And if he did, he’s currently keeping it to himself.

He’s stalking out of the cockpit, heading straight past Cara, close enough that she feels the air stir around her, the cape swishing by her ankles. He means for her to follow to the cargo hold. The kid in his seat makes a garbled, childish noise at their backs. She vaguely wonders if the kid will be okay up there on his own, and Mando noncommittally answers with a “yeah.”

And then Cara forgets the rest because she’s positively beaming at the sight before her.

“Pick one,” he tells her, leaning casually against the bulwark.

Detonators. Rifles. Pistol-blasters. Cara’s practically drooling. His weapons locker is fully stocked.

“Do you trust him?” she asks as she tests a few options.

“Not particularly. Last time I saw him I shot him.”

Cara’s heard all of Greef Karga’s stories. They were, at times even she was willing to admit, certainly entertaining. Which was exactly the point. Karga had pulled out all the stops on this tale – the lone Mandalorian versus the Bounty Hunter’s Guild. It was getting worse than some holodramas she’s seen.

“So then _why_ are we going?”

A heavy repeating-blaster rifle catches her eye and she takes it up.

“I don’t have a choice. You said it on Sorgan. They keep sending hunters. The kid’ll never be safe until the Imp is dead,” he says with some emotion.

There’s a sudden popping in Cara’s ear, followed by a high-pitched ringing. She tries to shake it out of her head, but it won’t disappear. She remembers the vision of the TIE fighter from her vision and Cara feels her stomach curdle, her blood running cold.

“And _you’re_ okay with bringing him back there?”

“Not really,” he sighs, defeated. He cocks his helmet in her direction. “That’s…why I’m bringing you.”

The hairs on Cara’s neck stand up and she’s looking down the barrel of her rifle when the smell of salt hits her nose.

“The kid,” she gasps.

Before it’s out of her mouth, the whole ship starts shaking. Her first instinct is they’ve been hit. That the TIE fighter has found them. _Burn them out._

She puts out a hand to steady herself and ends up catching the Mandalorian as he stumbles into her. They stagger backwards into the bulwark, the rifle clattering at her feet, sliding on the floor as the whole ship lurches one direction, then tips another. Her back is pressed uncomfortably against the weapons locker.

“The kid!” she and the Mandalorian yell at the same time, and they’re moving.

Scrambling up the ladder, in the tail of the Mandalorian’s cape, the two of them find the kid is steering the Crest.

Nearly falling over himself as the ship makes a gigantic dip sideways, which sends Cara into the wall with a gasp, he’s able to get to the kid, hand him over to her, and regain control of the Crest. Cara holds the little thing awkwardly out in front of her, and stumbles over to place him in his seat. She briefly senses the kid’s tepid fear, his uncertainty, before it’s swallowed – gone in the blink of an eye.

Once they’ve both calmed down and the Crest is gliding along smoothly once again. Cara blows a puff of air, disturbing the disheveled hair around her face. She never _did_ do the baby thing.

“We need someone to watch that thing.”

“Yeah,” the Mandalorian shakily agrees.

“Got anyone you can trust?”

And that’s how Cara finds herself back on Arvala-7. Back where it all started.

* * *

Cara’s first vision was of the world ending. She was nine years old.

She woke, screaming herself hoarse. Her mother came rushing in, turning on the light, dousing the room in yellow light and shocking the little girl in her bed.

“Cara, what’s wrong?” Alessandra sat at Cara’s feet, lines of distress on her pretty face. She was a tall, stately woman, with long dark hair and blue-black eyes.

Cara sniffled loudly; hot tears streamed down her face. Emotions coursed through her: vengeful and angry, horror and fear, a tremendous sadness weighed on her chest.

“They’re gone. It’s all gone!” She hiccoughed, face red.

“Darling, it’s just a nightmare,” Alessandra tried to soothe her. “It’s all over now.”

She tucked in beside her, setting Cara’s head under her chin, and petting the dark locks.

Cara sat, wide-eyed, looking around as if to confirm it was all real, nearly crying all over again from sheer relief. Alderaan was still here. Home.

There were her pictures pasted on the walls, the collection of her toys at the end of the bed, holobooks piled on the desk, and the clothes she laid out for the next day. She was in her bed, there was the moon– Cara could its circular shape through the light curtain. She could hear the crickets outside, a hallmark of Alderaan summers. There was a slight crispness to the air, autumn was soon to arrive, and the hot, lazy days of summer, and their time at the lake house, would end.

Tenderly, Alessandra combed Cara’s long hair, threading it through her fingers.

“Why don’t you tell me – maybe that will help,” her mother said, smelling of violets and fresh linen. She began to braid Cara’s hair.

The dream had been…Cara shivered violently.

“I saw the end of Alderaan,” she said in a small voice. More tears fell, wetting her cheeks.

“That’s never going to happen—”

“I _saw_ it! I did! Everyone died. Everyone!” Cara rose her voice, high-pitched and timorous. It echoed strangely in the yellow room.

“Shush, now, it was just a dream. Don’t move your head, Carasynthia, I have to finish the braid.”

Once they were done, Alessandra lay beside her daughter, wrapping her arms around her, telling her, “I’ll stay here until you fall asleep.”

Cara gazed at the stickers she had pasted to the ceiling. It was a miniaturized map of the galaxies, all the stars and constellations, recreated for childish imagination and adventure, just above her bed. “Where do we go when we die?”

“Well, no one really knows,” her mother answered honestly. “But some believe that when we die…we return to the stars.”

“Like grandma and grandpa? They went to the stars?”

“Yes,” Alessandra yawned loudly. “We turn into dust, and we fly away. Travel the whole galaxy, until we find a new home.”

Cara closed her eyes, dreamt of fields of violets and traveling the entire galaxy while riding a speck of dust.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Senaar’ika = Mando'a for little bird  
> hmmm...wonder who Lyssa's father is??? 👀
> 
> ...  
> This chapter kinda ruined me. I'm going to go cry in a corner now.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your continued support! Love you guys. Here's another one! (And is anyone surprised that this is turning out longer than I thought. Whoops.)
> 
> WARNINGS:... wow, none this chapter. good for me!

_The newborn slumbers. All of seven pounds and seven ounces. She can’t stop admiring the tufts of dark hair and long eyelashes, the smooth globes of cheeks, the little button nose. Now dressed, swaddled, milk-drunk and blessedly sleeping – her baby girl._

_Golden light permeates the room. Warmth presses all down her back, as he moves across the bed to wrap his arms around her. She feels safe, secure in his embrace._

_“She’s perfect.” His sigh graces her cheek as he leans over her to stare at their babe._

_“I’ve come up with a name...after my mother: Alessandra of Alderaan. Lyssa, for short.”_

_“Lyssa,” he repeats in a whisper. As if one cue, the baby’s lips pucker in her sleep. “I love it.”_

_Cara’s smile is as heavenly as the sun. “Ad’ika should be here.”_

_“P’rolly giving Peli hell right now.” He nuzzles her bare shoulder, kisses her._

_“_ Aliit ori’shya tal’din _,” she says. “And he’s been dying to meet her.”_

_She sees his broad hands as he bends to pick up the babe, spots the circular tattoo on his left hand (“Target practice,” he once said.). She tries to see his face, to memorize its contents…stark outline of a nose…the light is too bright…a mop of unruly dark hair…his features drown in shadow…cupid’s bow lips…_

* * *

Orange light beams directly in her eyes as she blinks them open. It’s the sun setting on Arvala-7. Pinks and purples bleed into each other in the sky as the sun dips towards the horizon.

“We’re here,” she hears the shadow of silver and black nearby say mechanically from the pilot’s chair, and Cara sits up, startled. She had fallen asleep in the cockpit.

“How long was I—”

“Not that long,” he says with no hint of emotion.

She stretches. The chairs are not the best for sleeping.

“You were…” the Mandalorian starts, but then he clears his throat loudly.

The pilot’s chair rotates, and the Mandalorian makes eye contact with her. Or, at least, Cara thinks he did, it happens so fast, and she can’t see where his eyes land, and then he’s abruptly about-facing and grumbling under his breath. She realizes this is more than his usual level of cantankerousness.

“What?” she spits out, feisty.

“You were talking in your sleep,” he says gruffly.

Her cheeks feel warm. “Nothing embarrassing, I hope.”

He’s focusing on the viewport, so doesn’t answer her right away. The Razor Crest descends smoothly towards a familiar moisture farm, sitting in the middle of a red sand valleys and jagged cliffs.

“Where did you learn it?”

Cara’s massaging out the crick in her neck. “Learn what?”

“Never mind.” He’s clicking the switches to shut down the engines with a little extra force. “He’s waiting for us.”

She catches a glimpse of the Ugnaught by the blurrg pen below.

Her dream is already fading. _“I came up with a name”… the familiar press of a body molding to hers… the strange language that came out of her own mouth… the warmth and protection and love she felt all around her… a circular tattoo on a man’s hand…_

Red-faced, she follows him off the ship, the Child in his repurposed pram floating between them.

The Ugnaught – Kuiil – is not surprised and welcomes them into his hut. While he’s rough around the edges, he’s as kind as the day she first met him. They make small talk while they settle down together, discussing the potential origins of the Child.

The Mandalorian introduces her.

“The dropper, I remember.” Kuiil gestures to her arm band. “Keeping the ghosts at bay?”

“Trying to,” she answers with a small chuckle.

The Mandalorian’s head swings between the two of them in a silent question and Cara just shakes her head the tiniest amount. Whatever she meant by that answer, he seems to accept it.

It’s a pleasant enough evening that passes with Kuiil in his hut. Disrupted only when an IG-unit walks in, bending awkwardly to fit through the door, carrying what appears to be a tea tray. The Mandalorian rises to his feet, blaster raised.

She recognizes this one from the compound, the Bounty Hunter droid. Last time she’d seen it, this Mandalorian had blown a hole through its main processing unit. He despises these things. Cara has no opinion on droids one way or another, but she stands and draws her weapon.

“Please, lower your blaster,” Kuiil raises his hands, palms out.

“That _thing_ is programmed to kill the baby,” Mando grits out, awash in unbridled fury.

Kuiil defuses the situation, explaining to that he’s changed. The droid has been re-programmed, re-wired to be a server droid, and in doing so has developed a more docile personality.

The Mandalorian is not convinced. “Is it still a hunter?”

“No, but it will protect,” Kuiil affirms.

The eyes of the droid spin, and a spindly arm extends, holding a mug. “Tea?” It drones.

Cara hears in the whirring of the droid’s mechanisms, the spinning ocular probes, something else. A resounding, grinding of metal in her ear, distantly, coming to her down a wormhole of Time.

“No, no, not now,” she mutters, seeing a dark storm cloud approaching the corner of her vision. She tries to block it out.

Beside her, the Mandalorian shifts. “What’s wrong?”

“Not now – not—” The humming grows louder and louder. Cara’s world fades and tilts.

Someone is gripping her arm tightly as the floor rises to meet her. Over the sound of the gears churning, she hears: “Cara! —what’s wrong? Cara?”

_She’s standing in the middle of fire. Angry tears stream down her face. “Promise me you’ll bring him.” A click and breath. She’s holding up a light in a long, dark tunnel. Underground, in the sewers. Imperial soldiers running like rats. Heavy metal footsteps echoing in a maze of tunnels. One endless corridor after another until a pile of helmets waits for them. The purple fires of a forge and a helmet of gold. She sees the droid walking through a river of lava. A white circle of light shines on a cowl stained with blood, sticky and red. Then a dark T-shaped visor, black on silver, mirror glowing orange flames… “I got you.”_

The humming dies down. Something begins to click into place, but it’s too far away for her to discern. When she comes to, her face is pressed against something wooly and fibrous, bathed in a familiar smell – woodsy, smoky, a pinch of leather.

Something tiny is palming her cheek. She hears a coo, dulcet and soft near her face.

“Let her rest,” comes one voice, scraggly and chalky.

“What happened?” comes a second voice, raspy, a touch hardened and tinny. “She had a _fit.”_

“She has the Sight.”

“The –what?”

“There are many rumors of those with this gift. Remnants of the future, the past…speaking to her,” Kuiil explains.

Cara groans and opens her eyes. She feels tired; it was a strong one this time.

The Child is sitting in front of her, stroking her cheek. His ears are flattened, and there is worry in his large eyes. She’s lying on the floor of Kuiil’s hut, someone stuck a dark grey cloak to pillow her head.

She tries to sit up. “I’m okay, I’m okay.” It sounds reedy and thin.

The Mandalorian stands over her. His helmet turns sharply upon hearing her speak. “Cara!” He exhales roughly, kneeling. “Don’t try to stand.”

With the vision long faded Cara feels her energy returning, but the Mandalorian’s grip on her shoulder is preventing her from moving anymore.

“Really, I’m fine,” she insists. He passes her a mug of tea, that’s when she notices he’s missing his cape.

“You fainted,” he says.

“I’m fine,” she repeats but chugs the tea. The Child makes a concerned series of chirps and pats her leg. She feels a burst of warmth from him, and it soothes her. She smiles weakly, grazing his wide ear.

Cara shares a blank look with each of the them peering cautiously at her, landing finally on the T-shaped visor of the beskar helmet. She swallows, a noisy, nervous sound in the tense room. _Blood and fire. A maze. A pile of helmets – Mandalorian helmets._ Then, she sees it standing to one side of the room, tall and ungainly, holding the tea tray in its spindly arms, ocular nodes scanning in the room, computing, and calculating.

_The droid walks in a river of lava. “Promise me you’ll bring him.”_

* * *

The Mandalorian finds her sitting on a low wall by the edge of the property. She came out here to watch the last of the sun going down over the valley, but really, she wanted some air. It was getting suffocating under the hawk-eyes of the others, watching her every move as if she might faint or drop like a sack of bricks.

The pinks and oranges are barely more than a thin line in the sky. Overhead, rich blues and opulent purples dominate the sky and, in one quadrant, the first appearance of a star winks down at her.

“Lemme guess,” she says, watching the Mandalorian approach her. She brings her knee up, hugs it close to her body. “Kuiil’s agreed.”

The Mandalorian’s sigh tells her all she needs to know.

“You trust him?” she cocks her head.

“I trust his work.”

That’s enough for Cara as well.

“And he’s bringing the blurrgs too,” he continues.

“The blurrgs?” She pouts, thinking of the close quarters of the Crest. “Yeesh, that’s gonna smell.”

She’s trying to lighten the mood, but the Mandalorian is sullen as ever. He rests against the brown-stone wall, looking out onto the same landscape Cara is admiring. Not quite a minute passes when she realizes that he’s discreetly glancing over at her, casting sidelong, fleeting looks.

"You all good, Mando?" She asks spryly.

She means to return his gaze, but he’s disappeared, a shell underneath the armor. The distance irretrievable. She wants to coax it out of him: the question that lingers on his tongue.

“You could have told me,” the Mandalorian says after another moment of silence that stretches for as long it takes for the last rays of sun to finally disappear beneath the distant mountain range.

“It’s a long story.”

He sneaks a glance over at the where the Child sits with Kuiil, who engineers some modifications on the droid. They’ll be occupied with that for a while.

“We have time.”

Funny thing, time. In a moment of unguardedness, a smile graces her lips. “Yeah,” she agrees. “Would you have believed me? Unless you’d seen it for yourself?”

Cara catches the sound of a few lizards of Arvala’s wildlife skid across the sand nearby, the croak of a frog down the path. Taking in a strong whiff of the nighttime chill, she shivers. She wears the Mandalorian’s cape, he’d removed it and used it to pillow her head when her vision took her. She tugs it tighter around her shoulders, dispelling the oncoming chill.

“How—?”

“I don’t know. I just do. Ever since I was a child. It’s usually not so dramatic—”

“So that’s how you found us – how you tracked us?”

She tries to explain to him how she receives visions, how they shift like tides on the ocean, revealing new and different wonders – the past, the present, the future, not linearly, but in a continuous circle. And how they’ve come true. The end of her world. The end of her military career. How she can sense danger around the corner. Her ghosts. A prophet tolling a death knell.

It’s not entirely true, for she sees _life_ too. She does not tell him that.

Surprisingly, he’s very calm, nodding along as she talks, until they succumb to quiet. Nothing but the crickets and lizards and frogs for company. It’s easy and comfortable between them. Cara wonders when trust became unspoken, when shared sighs became whole cartographies of understanding, and wonders if she could have prevented it if she tried. For nearly turning him over, kid or no, she isn’t sure how she earned this, despite saving his neck at least once or twice. She has the strongest desire to probe his feelings, to reach for him, unfurl him like a scroll, waiting to be read, its hidden secrets revealed.

The Child and Kuiil have long since gone inside. A plethora of stars have appeared overhead. The two of them have sunk to sit in the ground by now, the rough bricks of the dusty stonewall against their backs. Their legs splay outstretched, close enough that one knee is pressed to the outside of his thigh.

“The Child’s the only one I can’t understand, not in the same way,” she admits. “He’s strong. I mean, _really_ powerful. I’ve never felt anything like him.”

The Mandalorian nods in agreement. “I’ve never seen anything like him either.”

“Whatever he masters, it’s beyond my abilities. He’s like a, like a—” She comes up empty.

“Can you move things with your mind too?”

Cara’s bark of laughter is genuine. “You know, I’ve never tried.”

“Mind reading?”

She laughs louder. The wispy sounds of the Mandalorian’s chuckles escape the vocoder. Where their legs are touching, she feels him nudge her, as if in silent acknowledgement of some shared joke.

“It’s not like that,” she supplies. “It’s more like…searching another’s feelings.”

“Have you ever—?” Her smile disarms him. “No, never mind. Don’t answer that.”

“What? Have I ever felt you?”

His helmet whips to face her. There’s an expectant lift to the line of his shoulders and he’s sitting up a tad straighter.

Cara’s broad smile drops, abashedly. “Just the once.”

He hesitates. “When?”

Cara feels something akin to a hook reach, serpentine, under her ribcage, and attach itself. It’s stinging, hot and cold all at once; at the other end of the line, reeling her in is this Mandalorian. And she doesn’t even know his name.

“The night we took down the AT-ST.” She holds her breath.

They only have the stars for illumination, and his form wavers underneath their distant lights, his reaction, if any to her admission, tenebrous. Then, he’s bridging the short distance between them, touches the apex of her chin. Holds her like glass between his thumb and forefinger. Something stirs in her at the sensation.

“Your nose is healing nicely,” he murmurs.

With his helmet’s night-vision and their proximity, the small amount of swelling and the minor purpling of the skin around her nose, accentuating the bags under her eyes, is visible.

“Doesn’t hurt anymore,” she states.

The vocoder gives a staticky whir as he hums in reply, and his hand drops from her face.

“That dream I had,” he starts, a low and rough, but a touch softer than his usual tone. “For a while I thought it was the Child that sent it to me – the one that brought me back to find you, that he was trying to communicate with me. But now— what if it was you?”

She doesn’t have an answer.

The barest sliver of a moon is in the sky. It’s later than she thought. She’s hungry for whatever meal Kuiil has prepared, and then, maybe, a real bed to sleep on, not a chair in the cockpit. For once, her thoughts are quiet, does not crave the numbness of a strong drink or a meaningless romp in the sheets. Aware of the well-trodden path behind her – broken, winding, riddled with obstacles – before her is a beacon, leading her forth. She wants the promise of light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aliit ori’shya tal’din - family is more than blood


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another deep dive into Cara's past, and she receives a warning from the future. She begins to connect the dots.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know you guys are so awesome! I love all your comments and kudos. I treasure them all, so send more. cuz this story is a challenge sometimes, but I do love it.  
> So thank you!
> 
> Warnings: canon-typical violence, gore/blood, near-death experience, excessive drinking, mild (by my standard) smut, language.
> 
> stay safe everybody!!

Her breathing was too damn loud in her own head.

Vera is screaming, her face contorted, red with passion. Isak stood beside her. Twin blasters firing, Cara saw the torrent of shots, volleying between where their pinned behind their transport and the open spaceport. She’s shielding the diplomat with her body. He’s crouched at her feet, hands over his head, the perfect image of the cowardice politician.

Her own heavy-repeating rifle was heavy in her hands, but her finger was stilled on the trigger. For she heard something.

 _“Momma.”_ It’s a child’s whisper, and it takes her so by surprise she actually looked around for the source of it.

 _“Momma,”_ it came again, like wind over her shoulder. Her ears pricked up. _“Turn around, momma. I wanna show you—”_

Dust and debris fell around her. The white buckethead helmets of Imperials dodged in and out. The rifle fell from her shoulder, limp in her arms and she stumbled.

 _“Turn around, momma. Turn around now,”_ the voice told her.

Her feet moved on as if their own accord, shifting and spinning her where she stood. Gazing skyward, she caught the wink from a rooftop – sunlight reflecting off a scope that can only belong on a sniper rifle. Then she felt a heat bloom on her side.

It’s all ugly after that. There’s a deafening roar of noise, blaster shots, and screaming and Cara fell, clutching her hip, and sunk brutally to the ground. Blood was already angrily soaking her shirt, and pooling at the edges of her palm.

“Medpac!” She heard Vera shouting. “Medpac!”

Then Vera was before her, face inches from her own. “Stay with me, Cara, stay with me.”

“I heard—”

“Don’t talk,” Vera barked. “Isak! Medpac!”

He tossed it to her, ducking behind cover just as another round of shots lit up the sky above them. Vera rifled through it, then dosed her with something in her arm that made her woozy, either a painkiller or anti-bac. There’s so much blood, it’s raining down her leg now.

“Fierfeckin’ sniper,” Vera muttered, ripping open a bacta gauze with her teeth. “Isak, roof! You see ‘im?”

Cara’s mouth moved, but no sound came out. Her eyes felt so heavy. The blood running down her leg is a warm, oozing glaze. There are funny lights over Vera’s head, red and green, and Cara, dazed, watched them. She remembers hearing –

“It was a child—”

“It’s okay, Dune, you’re going to be—”

“She t-told me,” her lips wobbled. Sleep, she wants. She’ll just go to sleep.

“There’s a field medic on its way. Reinforcements are coming.”

“She called me—” Cara hiccoughed, with a pained whine, “momma, she called me m-mom—”

The line of worry on Vera’s face crumpled, a tide of emotion rippling across her features, already stained with blood, sweat, and soot. “You don’t have kids, Dune. It’s jus’ the—” Her eyes dropped to the growing stain on Cara’s side. “It’s the painkillers, yeah?” She said, soothingly. “Makin’ you all confused. Try to keep your eyes open.”

Every breath felt like fire down her side. “So… is this how it e-ends?”

Vera blew a puff of air, ruffling the hair on Cara’s face. A thin smile appeared for but a second on her friend’s face. “Don’t be so dramatic.”

Cara tried to laugh back at Vera. “H-hurts,” she gurgled and her whole body shivered violently.

 _“Momma,”_ the wind sang. “ _Turn around, momma.”_

* * *

“Turn around now, momma. I wanna show you…” The little girl was holding up a pile of her drawings. She began to narrate.

“This is how the story goes: Once there was a scary hunter who roamed the woods, but she wasn’t really scary she was just sad, but only when she thought nobody was looking. One day she came across a Mandalorian in the forest. ‘Hey lady,’ he said, ‘wanna help me take out an AT-ST?’”

She turned the page of her homemade story book.

“The AT-ST had scary eyes, red ones, and big blasters, and when it walked the trees shook. The hunter took out her blaster and shot the AT-ST and it fell over, and ‘Argghh’, the bad guys all ran away.

“But the Mandalorian had fallen in love with the hunter, so he said, ‘will you help me take care of my lil’ green baby and go on adventures?’ And the hunter said, ‘of course!’ Because the Mandalorian made her smile, but only when she thought nobody was looking. And the Mandalorian said, ‘also let’s get married.’

“And the hunter said 'ok!' This is a picture of their wedding. See— see momma, they’re holding hands. And I drew the lil’green baby, because he likes the hunter, because the hunter makes his Mandalorian happy, and could see that the hunter was no longer sad, only sometimes.

“Then the hunter and the Mandalorian had a baby and she turned out to be a secret princess, and she and her brother, a sorcerer, ruled together over the forest and all was peaceful and good, and everyone had cookies, and cake, and candy, and all the toys in the land, and there was no more bedtime. They lived happily ever after. The end.”

Lyssa gathered up her drawings. “Think dadda will like it?”

* * *

“Vera will be happy to hear you’re up and walking,” Isak said, leading her by the arm around the medical compound.

Cara grunted her reply.

“You know she wanted to come,” Isak continued, apologetic.

She hated the sympathetic look he was giving her, hated the way his eye kept drifting, as if guiltily to the large bandage on her side, hated all the sad looks the nurses and staff were giving were as she limped through the compound. With her eyes ablaze, and a constant sneer on her lips, she bit back the shooting pain in her side, doubled on her efforts to refuse painkillers.

“She can tell me herself when I get back to our platoon.”

“Cara,” Isak gave her a stern look, and remembered to slow his pace so as not to rush her. “You should take their offer of discharge.”

“No, I’m a soldier, Isak, I deserve to be on that battlefield. Those Imps—”

“You were legally dead, Cara!” He snapped at her. “Vera held you while you—she held you in her arms…”

A wash of guilt fell over her, and she scowled, her wound was throbbing, and so was her head. “I need to sit.”

They walked slowly to a bench nearby, and Cara all but melted into it, leaning heavily against the back wall for support and took a few long, gulping breaths. A sheen of sweat appeared on her brow and even though she was full of anger, she felt like weeping.

“If you take their discharge offer, you have a chance to be a free woman," Isak sighed. "There’s a lot of career opportunities for a soldier with your skills: mercenary, bounty hunting— This doesn’t have to spell the end.”

She’s thinking of free will. “If you could see your whole life from beginning to end,” she said, slowly, tuning out the pain, and holding back tears, “—would you change any of it?”

Isak doesn’t answer, and so just pats her knee.

* * *

“Ah, the wanderer returns! Are you looking for work, my sharp-tongued friend?”

“Who’s asking?” Cara lifted her head out of the pillow she made of her arms.

A man stood before her. One hand elegantly, if not a little threateningly poised on his hip, he wore dark clothing, and a greedy twinkle in his eye bespoke his suave demeanor.

“Name’s Greef Karga, and if I didn’t know any better, you’re the same woman who broke the nose of one of my associates just last night.”

Cara’s fist still hurt, the knuckles tender and raw. “Yeah,” she snorted, brushing the unruly hair out of her eyes. The bottle was only half finished before her and she poured a splash into the sticky glass. “Didn’t like the way he put his hands on me.”

“No, of course! That man is worth more trouble to me than you know. You did me a favor! But this is my bar you’ve been occupying, and I make a habit of knowing all who enter.” He made a dramatic sweep of his hand, as if denoting to her, and the other patrons in the cantina – not many, as it were – that all the seedy, unsavory types were worthy of his acquaintanceship.

“What brings you to Nevarro, soldier?”

Cara rolled her words around on her tongue. She was too hungover for this. “Jus’ passin’ through.”

“Expensive habit you have there?” He pointed to the top-shelf bottle of liquor she was drinking from. “May I assume you’re retired? I recognize that dropper tattoo.”

“Assume all you’d like.” She knocked the glass back, the amber liquid spilling pleasantly down her throat.

“I have a need for muscle like yours, if you’re interested.”

“M’not.” She bent her head into the folds of her arms again. She could use a few more hours of sleep.

Hours or minutes later, she can’t be sure, when she stumbled out of the cantina, she knocked her shoulder against a wall of dura-crete.

“Watch it,” she mumbled, words slurring, falling into the heavy object. Only it rippled beneath her. It wasn’t dura-crete it was dura-plast and it was moving…?

The curve of a shiny helmet caught the angle of Nevarro’s setting sun perfectly. She saw the line of a rifle strapped to him – for it _was_ , a man-shaped thing – wearing a dark red, russet-toned chest plate between mismatched pauldrons – shoulders set at an extreme rigid slant, as if her very presence was offensive.

Nausea overtook her, and, lightheaded, she swayed. “M’sorry,” she garbled, taking in heavy, gasping breaths, like she was going to be sick. Her hand shot out and clutched at the first thing she could grasp – some kind of coarse material on his arm.

A reedy whisper of a signature came to her…

Quickly, as if he burned her, she released her hand, walking backwards from him. The Helmet was silent.

She wet her lips and tasted metal.

“Hey, there’s that bitch!” Gruff hands pulled her round, tugging her away, and a grubby voice spoke out to her. “Hey, swee’heart, remember me? You broke my nose!”

Blearily, she realized this new person was winding his fist back for a punch. Cara squeezed her eyes shut in anticipation, but it never came.

“What the—” she heard him give an undignified yelp.

“Leave her alone.” Came a rigid, almost robotic voice.

Opening her eyes, unfocused though they were, she could make out that Helmet was gripping the raised arm of that Freak-with-the-Wandering-Hands, stopping the punch mid-air. It took Cara all of a few seconds to realize the metallic voice was coming from Helmet.

“Hands off, Mando. The bitch needs to pay my medical bills, that’s all! Teach her some kriffing respect,” the sordid man spat back. His nose was very lopsided, a slim bandage raked across the bridge of it, made his rancorous face more bloated.

Cara’s nausea rose spitefully higher, and she backed away a few paces, until she could rest her cheek against the sandy duracrete wall. Only then did the spins stop.

The sounds of a tussle drifted from over her shoulder, but Cara was swallowing to get the taste of bitter taste of metal out of her mouth. The images of the signature from the stranger whirled in her inebriated head… _the cold unfeeling interior walls of a ship…a tussle with a bounty… a wrenching dose of pain and loss…solitude in the stars… a sack of coins ringing on metal… “For the Foundlings”…_

She heard boots pull up behind her. She panted heavily, focusing on the solidity of the wall, and not the way the world kept spinning. Slowly, slowly, she opened her eyes. In her periphery, she caught the sheen of a shiny—

Her stomach clenched painfully, and she doubled over.

* * *

They’re twelve-hours or so at this speed before they touch down on Nevarro, and Cara finds the moments pre-battle tepidly slow. They’ve exhausted discussion of their plan of attack (“take out the head Imp, and the rest will run like rats”) and so have lulled into silence, working on their respective tasks. She’s cleaning her blaster while he flies the ship.

Cara likes him in this space, all to herself in the cockpit, when it’s who knows-what-hour and the sim lights are low. The Child, Kuiil and even the blurrgs, bless them, are all asleep below in the hold. He hasn’t moved in going on an hour, and the lip of his helmet rests on the cusp of his chest plate, so Cara breaks the silence first.

“Did we ever sleep together?”

Her question makes him flinch, and he looks up at her sharply, before ducking his head. He writes off his embarrassment with a wheezy, humorless chuckle.

“Just checking you hadn’t fallen asleep,” she smirks, and kicks her feet up, resting her ankles on the dashboard next to his chair. He doesn’t comment on her presumptive placement. They go back to quiet, the tinkering of the blaster rifle she’s taking apart making a kind of pleasant background noise.

“We did meet before. On Nevarro. You were—” he says after a while. She waits, patiently. “You’d been drinking.”

“Ah.” Her brows wiggle on her forehead. “And I _didn’t_ try to sleep with you?? _That_ doesn’t sound like me at all.”

“You vomited on my boots.” There’s a playful inflection to his jibe, and the tilt of his helmet suggests the memory of their first meeting, all that time ago, is endearing.

Cara blanches, her ankles skid off the dashboard and her legs plop awkwardly to the floor. At times even her past is difficult to confront. “I-I wasn’t proud of the person I was then.”

The Mandalorian nods, but he’s faraway like he’s deep in thought, or caught remembering some deeply repressed memory. He shakes himself, adds, “We’ve all made choices we’re not proud of.”

“You tellin’ me you weren’t always an honor bound Mandalorian?”

“I did what I had to.”

In a different mood, Cara might retort with some mouthy comment. She remembers what he said before – the beskar is a reminder of his sin. Perhaps this final act is a chance at redemption.

She’s been thinking a lot about redemption too. About free will and fate. About a future that she deserves.

He must have turned the ship on auto-pilot, because he’s taking his own blaster out and the two of them sit in silence, now both cleaning their weapons, each caught in their own orbit.

She should sleep, but she’s not tired for her body hums alight in anticipation. Floating her legs back up to the dashboard, she rests them there like before, only sinks back in the leather cushions of the seat, content to just watch the stars for a bit. Only her attention keeps pulling back to the Mandalorian.

It had escaped her notice until now, but he had removed his gloves for finer dexterity in maintaining his weapon. A spot on his hand catches her eye. At the root of his left thumb, is a circular mark like a tattoo.

_A man’s face in shadow bends to pick up a babe… The strange words she recited in a language she doesn’t know… “Aliit…”_

Cara stands so abruptly, the weapon in her lap clatters to the floor grates noisily, startling the Mandalorian.

“ _I’ve come up with a name”… a small baby cradled in the arms of a man with a circular tattoo on golden skin… a little girl with amber eyes…grows into a bull-headed teenager…“Senaar’ika, go apologize to your mother”…_

“Y-you," Cara stutters.

She seizes his wrist to stare at the little circle of black ink on golden skin. It resembles a bullseye. Her head is swimming, blood pounding so loudly in her ears she barely registers that he’s speaking to her.

“What? What’s wrong?” The Mandalorian barks at her.

“It’s…you.”

_“I can bring you in warm…” her whole body shivers in anticipation… “or bring you in cold?”… steady hands at her brow …a pool of blood down a drain…the piercing cries of a newborn babe… “I got you. Both of you.”_

“Are you having another vision?”

“Can’t be. It can’t.” But she knows it’s true, with a plummeting sense of certainty.

“What?”

“What does this mean?”

“The tattoo?”

“Yes. What does it mean?”

“Nothing. I got it— I used to run with this crew years ago.”

She squeezes his wrist harder and he hisses. The expression on her face is feral. “Tell me right now. Don’t lie.”

Target practice, she remembers.

“Target practice,” he rasps.

Her grip drops and the Mandalorian stands, aggressively close. She watches the visor, but she does not see it. She’s searching for the face underneath. It’s why she’s never found that face in any stranger. The man from her dreams.

“It _is_ you.”

Behind him the lights of space are indifferent, apathetic even. She nicks her arm on the doorway as she leaves the cockpit, all but runs out of the small space. He calls after her, but she ignores him.

Around her, the ship hums, unknowingly bringing them closer and closer to her destiny.

* * *

_They always find each other in darkness. Without sight, her other senses take over, she can taste, smell, touch him._

_Her mouth finds his skin, open and tastes him. She kisses his body. It is rough, scarred, damaged at some points, on others, he is smooth, surprisingly soft and silky. It is her turn to map him, and he whimpers, mewls under her touch. He smells of rain. He tastes brackish, earthy, and she chases the taste of him, receding like smoke on her tongue, until she offers her mouth and devours, inhales him once more._

_“I used to be afraid of the dark,” she whispers, rubs her nose against the sensitive skin on the inside of his elbow._

_"And now?” She knows his voice. Touch starved, he is eager, made breathless. His hands are broad and warm, cradle against her ribcage, dance down her legs._

_“Now I know it’s a gift,” she purrs. Her mouth makes a path up his arm, kisses his collarbone, up to his neck. “A place of discovery.”_

_She can feel him, alive, thrumming pulse beneath the silk of her lips. They share their next breath. “It tells me who I am.”_

_His hands encompass her, spreading her and she spills over him. Her body turned to liquid in the pitch blackness._

_“Don’t hold back,” she orders. There’s a hot-blooded growl that answers._

_When he enters her, she sees stars – impossibly. All her focus narrows to the tightness, the slickness, the swiftly rising pleasure. She clutches him as if to anchor herself, for she is growing, sprouting, ballooning away from herself. His kisses bring her back, ground her, the hot envelop of his mouth on her neck, her breasts. The squeeze of his hands on her hips ensnare her, never to part._

_He praises her, tells her how good she feels, how perfect she is, how stunning, how beautiful when he fucks her—_

* * *

“Cara. You ready?”

She swings herself up and sits atop the blurrg. She looks down at Mando tightening the reins by her knee, hands them to her.

“We’re not done yet,” he tells her. He means about last night, about how she ran out of the cockpit like Imps were on her tail. A bruise formed on her right elbow from the doorframe that she was too slow to dodge.

He has no idea how true those words really are.

“No,” she says stiffy, devoid of any emotion. “No, we’re not.”

The Mandalorian sighs, resigned to her stubbornness. He casts one final look at the surroundings of the ship before they set out: Kuiil reminding the droid that it’ll stay on board the Crest, the Child sitting up in his pram, observing the adults. Through the large open side door, Nevarro’s lava field awaits, and with it an answer to her dreams.

“Will you at least tell me where you learned it?” It’s not a plea, just a compromise. “The Mando’a. Who taught you?”

“You do,” she replies. “Or…you will.”

That takes him by surprise. He reels back, dumbfounded. Shaking his head, he sighs again. “In this future you see, we’re still friends then?”

“Yeah Mando.” She tries not to think about the way her heart flutters, misses a beat. The scent of rain emanates, impossibly, from him. “We’re still friends.”

* * *

It’s not a surprise that Karga’s brought back up. She recognizes the three sorry-looking fools from the Guild almost immediately. Luckily, none she’s been more intimate with – which could make things, well, weird.

“Sorry for the remote rendez-vous,” Karga speaks up, resting his hands on his hips, “but things have gotten, _complicated_ , since you were last here. Ah – erm…Is that you Dune?”

Cara adjusts her leg to get more comfortable on the blurrg, tossing her head she gives her old boss a smirk.

Karga’s eyes narrow, irritated. “You better stick with the ship.”

Cara opens her mouth to respond, cheekily, but Mando beats her to it. “She’s coming with me.”

“The town is now run by ex-Empire. If she comes with us, they’ll all get their hackles up.”

The Mandalorian is immoveable. “She’s coming.”

“Fine. Fine. At least cover your tattoo, Dune, no need to flaunt it.” Karga changes course. “Now where is the little one?”

The new pram floats forward with a few clicks on the Mandalorian’s vambrace, and then the Child is revealed.

“So this little bogwing is what all the fuss was about? What a precious little creature. I can see why you didn’t want to harm a hair on its wrinkled little head.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see the Mandalorian is moving just enough to touch the point of his blaster in a threat. Cara mirrors him. They’re all nervous and her senses are nearly overloading. The air smells like rotting corpses, like sweat and burnt earth. She had her first taste of that scent in the war, it’s hardly forgettable.

Karga is still speaking. “Well I’m glad this matter will be put to rest once and for all. The sun drops fast on Nevarro. We can walk for a spell, camp out at the riverbank, then make our way into town at first light.”

The blurrgs are slow moving along, keeping pace with the security detail Karga has hired. They keep flashing her indulgent sneers, turning to each other and whispering under their breath. A muscle in her jaw ticks.

“Something’s not right,” she tells Mando and Kuiil as soon as they have a moment to themselves.

They’re untethering the blurrgs, setting them aside, while they settle around a campfire for the night. Her limbs are sore from sitting on their backs for many hours. The sky is almost black by now – the last light of sun is a mere sliver of grey in the sky.

“With your contact?” Kuiil asks. Mando has gone stiff with tension.

“No, not Karga.” Cara shakes her head. “It’s something else.” She can’t pinpoint it.

Kuiil nods thoughtfully; the Mandalorian is, tactfully, silent. They shortly join the others around the fire pit, where a meal is roasting on the spit.

The darkness approaches quickly, and soon they are shrouded in it. The flames of the fire are their only source of light. Cara feels herself slipping, feels the darkness calling her. The smell of rotting carcasses lingers like a monster lurking just beyond the shadows.

Karga wastes no time diving back into conversation with them, filling the eerie silence of the night. “I guess the little bugger’s a carnivore. Never seen anything like it. They were ready to pay a king’s ransom for that thing. Must be for some kind of high falutin menagerie.”

“Let’s go over the plan again,” the Mandalorian fidgets beside him. “Tell me about his reinforcements.”

So, the Guild boss explains: all ex-Empire, as soon as they lose their paycheck—poof, they’ll all scatter.

“And what if they don’t?” The Mandalorian asks.

“They will,” Karga answers, much to confidently.

Cara hears the wind whipping across the lava plain. It sings a familiar tune in her ear: “ _Momma_.”

This has happened before, and it was a warning then too.

The roasting meat on the fire shoots sparks into the dark, dark night. “ _Momma_ ,” they hiss. All Cara can hear is a child’s voice hovering in the air. “ _Momma, watch me fly. Watch me fly!_

She stands, feeling the wind tickle the hair on her neck, and from far off, the sound of wings approaching. Her abrupt movement alerts Kuiil and the Mandalorian. In his pram beside them, the Child makes a whine of distress.

“Trust me: nothing can go wrong,” Karga finishes.

Something huge, dark, and shadowy descends from the night. It careens across the fire, swiping Greef Karga where he stands with a blood-curling shriek. It smells of death and decay.

Cara is the first to grab her heavy-repeating blaster, firing shots after the shadow with wings. The rest follow suit, rising with their blasters and aiming into the night. It swoops down again, and the red of the blaster fire light up two creatures on wings. They’re able to kill one of the dark shadows before it takes off with a blurrg.

Large talons appear over the Mandalorian’s shoulder and drag him away. She aims at that one until it drops Mando, grunting and furious. He’s clicks his vambrace cannon and flames shoot out of his wrist, igniting the creature. Cara sees the large wings of death take off, a pointed beak and many, many teeth. With a screech it flies off, tail and wings burning.

Then it all goes quiet. Unhurt, the Mandalorian flies to the pram, and the cover parts to reveal the Child, unharmed.

She takes stock of the who’s left: one of the Guild hunters is missing, picked up by the creature, and they’ve lost two blurrgs. There’s a groan from Karga. Kuiil is the first to attend to him.

“He’s hurt,” he exclaims.

Indeed, there are three large gashes in his arm from the creature. It’s discolored, must be some kind of poison from those creatures.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Karga croaks, but a sheen of sweat spots his brow.

Cara drops to her knees beside him. “Hold still,” she rebukes him, pinning him with one hand, while with the other she opens her medpac. “They got you good.”

Working quickly, she doses Karga with a shot, which makes him wince and groan louder.

“How bad?” The Mandalorian demands from over her shoulder.

“Bad,” she states, keeping her voice as even as possible. “The poison’s spreading fast.”

“So this… this is how it happens.” The elder man is panting, eyes screwed shut in pain.

Wrapping the bacta strip on his arm, she peers at the man who used to be her boss. She hadn’t foreseen this, and so, feels helpless. With a pang she wishes that things hadn’t turned so sour, wishes she had said goodbye to him before she left for Sorgan.

“Don’t be so dramatic,” she breathes.

It leaves her mouth before she can think straight, and with a rush of panic at the memory, she realizes it was Vera who had said the same thing to her, all those years ago.

His mouth falters, spreads into a quick grin, more a grimace through his pain. “Still have your twisted sense of humor, huh, Dune?” Then he groans and falls back.

Desperately, holding back a river of tears, she turns to the others. “I need another medpac!”

They return her look blankly. Even the two remaining Guild hunters, vacantly shake their heads at her. “Got any other medpacs?” she cries at them. “Anyone?”

“I’m guessing that’s a ‘no,’” Karga remarks, strangely calm. He has almost no strength left and can barely hold himself up.

“It’s still spreading. This isn’t working” she says, urgently scanning his arm. She growls, curses in vexation. It isn’t fair, she thinks, why would they not show her this? Why didn’t she see how to save him?

There’s a scuffle from the vicinity of her knee and she catches a flash of green. The Child’s small body appears out of the shadows, holding out his hand towards Karga’s arm.

Frustrated, she seethes: “Get this thing outta here.”

“Wait,” Kuiil instructs.

Slack-jawed, they watch as the Child, setting his hand upon Karga’s arm, closes his eyes, and remarkably, begins to heal the open wound. The skin around the gashes shrink, seal themselves up. They slowly disappear, like sand ebbing away in the tide, until there is nothing left. Not even a scar.

Then, exhausted, the Child’s little legs giving out from the exertion, and he plops down next to Cara. He’s blinks, wearily, a touch dopey, at the gathered crowd.

Astonished, Cara touches Karga’s healed arm. “How does it feel?”

“F-fine,” he stutters, still in shock. He moves it. The lines of pain on his face vanish, confusion replaces them. “It doesn’t even hurt. I feel…I feel great actually.”

She senses the power, the flow of energy whirling around the Child, like an aura or a cloud, hovering over, within, and through him. It’s a blank, bottomless void stretching for eternity, with no beginning or no end; Cara is in awe of it.

Then, with a little anticlimactic shake of his tiny body, the Child sneezes.

* * *

“This is Greef Karga,” Cara introduces him. “Come say hi.”

Lyssa clings to her mother’s leg, but when Greef Karga offers her his hand to shake, she takes it.

“Hello there. We’ve met before, but you were only yea-big,” he gestures. “It was right after you were born. It’s nice to me you again, Lyssa.”

“Are you my real uncle?” She asks him.

“Well, no, but feel free to call me Uncle Greef. And woulda look at all your curly hair – where did you get that from?”

“My grandpa,” the little girl supplies. “My daddy says that his daddy had curly hair just like me.”

Greef hesitates, and then laughs. “Well how about that? You know I never pictured your old man with any hair at all.”

That makes Lyssa giggle. “My daddy has lotsa hair. Hey, Uncle Greef, wanna see my scar?”

“She’s been showing everyone,” Cara clicks her tongue and rolls her eyes.

“Well, sure. I’ll see it,” Greef says agreeably.

Lyssa lifts her chin, so the elder man can inspect underneath where he sees a thin jagged white line.

“Well how about that? Most impressive!”

“I was trying to fly, but I fell,” Lyssa pronounces, matter-of-factly.

“Fly? And how did you manage that?”

Cara sees her opportunity to butt in. “Let’s not re-live it, please.”

“I fell off the bed,” Lyssa states, growing bolder. “And I hit my chin on the dresser. Momma said there was so much blood it was purple! And then I got six stitches.”

“Purple blood! That’s royalty!” Greef chuckles warmly.

If Lyssa’s dark amber eyes could widen anymore, they did. “What?”

Greef shoots Cara a cunning look, then drops his voice, so as to keep this confidential between him and the seven-year-old. “You might be a secret princess.”

Lyssa’s mouth hangs open, too stunned to speak. She’s rolling over that possibility in her little head.

Cara rolls her eyes, pats the few errant curls on her daughter’s head. “Don’t give her any ideas,” she warns her old boss sliding into the booth opposite him.

She tries to set up Lyssa up with a data pad to keep her occupied, but she is too hyper to sit still, having been cooped up in a shuttle for the long space travel. Instead she’s nearly bouncing off the walls with so much pent-up energy. So, Cara lets her daughter burn off some of it while she catches up with her old boss.

“Well, well, what brings you all to Nevarro?” Greef asks her.

“Holiday,” Cara supplies.

“Holiday?” Greef echoes with a quirked eyebrow. He turns in his seat to inspect the other patrons of the common house, still a thriving Bounty Hunter’s Guild hotspot. “This look like a place for a family holiday to you?”

“You’re the only available babysitter.”

“Baby—” The man’s mouth opens and closes several times, gob smacked. “Babysitter!? You’re pulling my leg. This is your twisted sense of humor, huh, Dune?” His booming laugh echoes. “So, this little ‘rendez-vous’ you two planned on Nevarro wasn’t just so you could catch up with an old man like me?”

Cara bats her eyes innocently. “Dear Greef, I don’t know _what_ you’re talking about.”

“Watch yourself, Dune, or I’m going to start charging for babysitting.”

“Uncle Greef watch me do a cartwheel!”

Turning back to Cara, he drops his tone while the server droid places their drinks on the table. “I hear he’s been following a pretty decent tip.”

Cara took a long sip of the Corellian wine. “He gets a tip every few months,” she says. “Most of them are nothing. I tend not to get surprised anymore.”

“Yeah, well, this one sounds the most promising,” he tips his glass in a faux salute to her. “You ever hear of Skywalker in the Rebellion?”

“Sure, Golden Fly-Boy himself. Never believed any of those rumors about him anyway.”

“Yeah, but if he knows about the kid… Lyssa, I missed the cartwheel, you’ll have to do it again. Practice makes perfect. When does his ship get in?”

“This evening,” Cara quips.

Greef reads the signs of aging on the woman’s face before her and offers her a sympathetic smile. She’s watching Lyssa practice cartwheel after cartwheel with a maternal eye, but the Cara Dune he’s known over the years is still there, witty and sharp, dangerous and stunningly beautiful as ever.

“It gets lonely up there in space, I’m just glad he has the little one for company,” Greef says.

“Yeah, me too.” Her sigh speaks volumes.

“You miss him,” Greef correctly assesses.

“Uncle Greef, ready? Watch this one!” Lyssa shouts.

“You know I may not be able to read his face, but I can read yours, Dune. No shame in admitting it. You miss them.”

Cara shrugs, noncommittal. She hides her rising blush behind another sip of wine.

Greef applauds Lyssa. “Ten out of ten cartwheel, young lady!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all I wrote the ending already, some of you have expressed worry that all this angst is making them nervous. LEMME TELL YA NOW IT'S SO SOFT. so don't worry. i got you.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for your patience. this story is almost done!!
> 
> Chapter warnings: Canon-typical violence, head injuries, blood and gore, language, near death experiences, dark themes

Memory is a fickle thing. Changeable, like a river. She’s never stepping into the same one twice.

There would be things she’d easily forget. People, places, and faces, come to her in dreams, sliding away with time, eroding and drifting. Sometimes gone altogether.

She will forget the names and faces of the two men that Greef Karga shot that afternoon before everything fell apart. When in a crisis of consciousness, after the Child had saved his life, he deftly changed tactics and deciding not to turn them over to the Imperials. In the grey light of Nevarro’s skies, she sought his feelings, trespassing across the divide between them and found Greef’s words and intentions pure, untainted.

Her last memory of Kuiil is him riding off on the back of a blurrg with the Child, heading to the ship, growing smaller and smaller across that dire, repulsive landscape. She prefers other memories of him to that one, and that hopeless sinking in her gut as they turned upon the city.

She often thinks of that Ugnaught, even years later, when he had offered her tea on that hot day the first time they met; made her dinner and was kind when no one else had dared so before. _Cover your stripes_ , _dropper_ were the Ugnaught’s last words to her. She only had enough to give him a grey smile. Hours later, she would sense his passing, like witnessing the last rays of sunshine descending beneath the serrated horizon on the mountainous terrain of Arvala-7. The sky going black into an eternal night.

She will remember that just before she clicked the binders over his wrists, the Mandalorian gently strokes her cheek. It’s so delicate, she thinks she dreamed it. Once they had been enemies, on opposite sides; once, he had been her prey. His knuckles sweep just under her left eye, where she forgets her _other_ tattoo is branded on her skin. Perhaps it’s in some secret language of his own, as if telling her _I trust you_ , or _I’m sorry_ , or maybe he was just trying to tell her _be safe_.

What he actually says is: “I need your eyes.”

“I’m watching,” she replies.

The hook under her ribcage will twist hot and cold. _The next time I get him alone_ , she tells herself. _Then I’ll tell him everything about our future_. But that won’t be for a long, long time, and she’ll have already thrown herself into the fire.

The number of Imperial troopers is far larger than what Greef surmised. When the TIE fighter appeares, streaking across the skies of Nevarro, that sinking feeling grows so large, Cara feels like she’s buried alive under it. She’ll see the man in black descend and remember his words: _burn them out_. She certainly won’t remember all the other things the Moff said when they were pinned within the walls of the common house, frantically looking for a way out. Only, that she thought he talked too much.

The E-web she remembers. That shit is hard to forget. And she’ll be reminded that she’s seen this destruction before, witnessed the clouds of dust it brought up, knocking her comrades down where they stood, vaporized mid-descent.

The Mandalorian will reveal how he knows it’s Moff Gideon – the executed war criminal. He’ll explain everything, how Mandalorians are a creed not a race, that he was raised in the Fighting Corps on Mandalore. That he’s a survivor.

Only later will he fill in the gaps. Just to her, under cover of darkness. Sometime not too far from that moment, they’ll be lying in bed, holding each other. He will tell her about how he lost his parents. He will cry into her shoulder, seemingly all night. Cara will hold him, and rub his back, and grieve and grieve and grieve with him, as silently as the grave. Until either can’t take crying anymore, and they make angry love, nearly breaking the bed, holding onto each other as if they’re the last real thing. Better than any memory. In the blue light of dawn, she’ll see him rise early, standing naked and staring out the window, he’ll pause to watch the sun rise before slipping the helmet over his head.

That will all occur later. Sometimes her dreams are like memories.

_The Mandalorian, bleeding from a head wound, saying, “Let me have a warrior’s death.” No, she thinks. Not like this. It doesn’t have to end like this._

The future is a fickle thing. Changeable, as a river.

She’ll often retell this part the same way: if you knew the ending, would you change it? That it all came to her in a blink of an eye, or, a _tink_ of blaster fire hitting beskar. So, she goes running out of the common house into the line of fire, Greef and the droid IG-11 as her cover. She knows exactly what she has to do.

Is the future really set in stone? She’ll wonder, and then take her fighting chance. She was always the one with balls.

She pulls the Mandalorian with a rough tug on his arm, and dropping the E-web cannon, he stumbles, telling her to get away, to take cover. “What are you doing?” He hisses at her.

“Saving your metal ass.” With a well-aimed kick to his cuirass, she sends him sailing backwards, just as the generator blows up behind her. She’s exactly where she needs to be.

* * *

“Cara! Stay with me!”

She’s being dragged through the common house. There’s a whirring sound nearby, like the melting of metal. Farther off, a distant rumble of blaster shots. Gloved hands tap at her cheeks and her eyes open and close many times, taking in the fuzzy form of a Mandalorian helmet, black T-visor mere inches from her face. It swims in and out of focus. Her breathing rattles in her chest.

“Cara! What did you do?” His voice breaks. “What did you do, ner kar’ta?!”

She remembers that Death takes many forms. When she greets him this time, she thinks she might take him up on his offer. After all, third times the charm.

“S’okay. You have to go now. Take the kid and go!” She nudges his hand away, but he keeps coming back, grasping it tightly in a fist.

Blood stains the front of his cape. Upon seeing it, she registers that it’s her own. There’s so much, and it’s so dark, almost purple. _Royalty. You might be a secret princess._

Her visions go in and out. Short-circuiting, coalescing and blending in her brain.

_I’ve come up with a name._

“Stay with me, Cara!”

_I hate it, I hate it. I hate you momma!_

_You wanna beat the Imps, don’t play by their rules._

She can’t make heads or tails of _when_ she is.

There’s a wall of fire that breaks into window. Throwing a fierce inferno of heat into the room. Rocketing forward, the Mandalorian covers her, protecting her from the worst. Pressing her face into his cowl and Cara feels rather than sees the first jet of fire stream into the room. It superheats the air, and her nose, still healing twinges where it’s pressed into the woolly cape at his neck. Once it’s gone, she lifts her head so she can breathe. Each inhale like acid in her lungs.

“I’m not going to make it,” she stutters.

Behind him the room is in shambles. There are flames everywhere, alive with smoke, ash, the stench of burning flesh. She catches a glimpse of the Child by her boot, ears flattened pathetically.

“I won’t leave you.”

“You can save him, you idiot. I’m giving you time. Take the kid and—” her lip trembles. She can see her daughter – their daughter. The future she could have had, if she ever makes it out of here. Or, living only in her dreams. “Don’t you waste it,” she croaks.

“Shut up,” he implores. “You-you just got your bell rung.”

“You can protect the Child. I’ll hold them off.” She doesn’t lose her grip on his hand.

A shadow enters the burning room. Death has returned.

She sees the Child rise. A river of fire envelops the room. Cara braces herself against the inescapable heat, only it never comes.

It’s stopped. The little one is holding his own against the flames. He flicks his tiny wrist, and they swoosh, dissolving away. A force of energy, conjured by the tiny, green Child knocks the flames backwards, sending them and the Death Trooper away. The blow back knocks Cara against the table, jostles the Mandalorian hovering over her.

The kid makes a soft noise, and falls, dazed, rolling backwards, clearly exhausted. The power that hovers, leaks out of him, dissipates, consumed by nothing.

There’s a clank of metal ripping. IG-11 has sheared through the sewer grate, kicking it away for their escape.

“C’mon, it’s open! Let’s go!” Greef urges them.

“Go,” she pushes Mando’s hand. “Go.”

“Cyare,” he whispers at her.

“Go!”

“We have to move.” Greef Karga stands behind the Mandalorian until he releases her hand, reluctantly, in a daze.

The turbid swirl of her emotions runs unchecked and she fights back more tears, meeting Greef’s eyes. He has to physically drag the Mandalorian away, setting the Child in his arms and turning away.

“I will stay with the bounty hunter,” comes the drone of IG-11.

“Promise me you’ll bring her,” the Mandalorian rages.

“You have my word,” the droid agrees.

With one more frantic movement, his visor trains on her. Hardened steel reflecting orange flames. Then he’s gone, descending into darkness.

* * *

_“I can bring you in warm, or I can bring you in cold,” he would coo in her ear. A warm hand over her eyes, cold steel of beskar on her skin._

She’s sweating profusely in the warm room. A beam falls from the ceiling, devoured in flames. The building is collapsing. Cara manages a dry laugh through her tears. “Bring me in hot,” she mouths. The sweat pours down her face.

_A young girl with darky curly hair and fierce amber eyes sits at her knee. “I don’t hate you momma,” Lyssa says._

“C’mere, my little bird. All is forgiven,” Cara weeps.

IG-11 towers over her. “You’ve suffered damage to your central processing unit,” it drums. The ocular probes of the droid whir, taking in her form. “This is a bacta spray. It should heal you in a matter of hours.”

There’s a cool mist hitting the back of her head and Cara winces, groans at the sudden temperature difference. The shadow over her head loosens, like a great weight has lifted off her neck. Hurtling her into the present.

She’s still breathing.

IG-11 extends a spindly arm. “Try to stand, I will assist you.”

* * *

It’s slow going in the sewers. They stretch endlessly. Pass empty corridors, darkened tunnels that disappear into nothing. It’s a maze. They could be anywhere. What if they never leave?

The droid is calm. It’s a droid, after all, but it seems to sense her acute panic.

“We are not far from them. They are just ahead,” it tells her. “The Mandalorian will be happy to see you. He was explicitly clear that I should return you to him. He was quite sincere; I analyzed his voice.”

If the pounding in her head was any duller, she might have commented on the jocular tone of the droid.

“His heart rate is always elevated around you and his core temperature spikes.”

“What are you saying?” Cara turns her head to look quizzically at the droid.

“I am only attempting to make you feel better.”

She’s not sure how any of this is making her feel better. Thankfully, he shuts up after that. They are nearing the others for she can hear the sound of boots, the quiet whines of the Child ahead.

A spotlight flashes in her eyes, and she has to turn away, cringing from the brightness of it. She can just barely make out the sharp contour of his visor, the light hanging off his helmet. He takes her gently, does his own assessment, tilting to see the injury at the back of her head, the damp blood matting her hair, and checking her vitals.

“Cyare,” he mutters under his breath over and over, all gently, while clicking his tongue. “Ner kar’ta.”

The light is making her nauseous.

“Thank you,” the Mandalorian grates, quite sincerely, to the droid at her side. Then, he’s wrapping an arm under her waist and she’s spilling into his torso.

“I got you,” he says to her. “You’re concussed.”

“ _You’re_ concussed,” she sasses right back, if only to prevent herself from vomiting.

A wheeze like a laugh escapes the Mandalorian’s vocoder. “Next time, leave the head injuries to those of us with helmets, hm, cyar’ika?”

She slips her arm over his shoulder, but her unsteadiness makes her cheek bump the plating on the side of his helmet. He freezes at the touch.

“It was s’posed to be you,” her lips barely graze the cool metal of his helm and her fingers plunge into the soft fabric around his neck. “I saw it. It was s’posed…be you.”

The Mandalorian’s arm around her waist squeezes tighter. He’s warm and comfortably solid.

She’s beaten Death again.

* * *

They weave their way through the sewers intending to find the covert. The Mandalorians will escort them out.

Her nausea is subsiding, as has the temporary dizziness, and she feels her strength returning.

“I can walk,” Cara announces at one point.

The Mandalorian protests, but it’s toothless. With great reticence, he releases her. Once again, fussing over the injury on her head, checking that it’s not bleeding. She doesn’t mind that his hands linger, warmly on her bare skin by her neck, and he murmurs that Mando’a word under his breath at her – _cyar’ika_.

She takes a few wobbly steps forward.

“The bacta infusion is working,” chimes in the droid.

* * *

There are ghosts in these tunnels. Cara can feel them, the lost souls of the departed haunting this place.

The Mandalorian is the first to spot it.

The painted armor, is in pieces, piled high, cracked, and broken – the treasured beskar lies stripped of its purpose. Now, nothing more than a mass grave marker. It’s a cemetery.

He sinks to his knees, holding up one piece in the smoky light, shoulders trembling with his labored efforts to breathe.

A figure steps out of the shadows, a gold helmet atop her head. She is the master of the forge. A tall woman, wearing a cape made of furs.

The Child makes a soft cooing noise from the sling, ears drooping. This new Mandalorian stares for a long moment at their motley crew. Finally, turning, she says, “Come with me, Din Djarin.”

As outsiders, Cara and Greef are not allowed to approach while Din and the Armorer converse privately for a long while. They discuss something serious between bowed helmets. He appears to be urging her to come with them, to which, she keeps adamantly shaking her head.

The fires of the forge melt down a dented cuirass, turn it to a viscous grey substance, bubbling in the heat. All things can transform, Cara thinks, even the invincible beskar.

“This is the one? The one that saved you from the mudhorn?” The armored woman speaks up. They fall back into heated whispers, something about ancient wars and sorcerers. The Armorer pours the melted beskar into a mold and she forges this piece onto Din’s right pauldron.

“The Child is a Foundling,” the Armor declares. “By Creed until it is reunited with its kind, you are its father. This it the Way. You have earned your signet. You are a clan of two.”

They should keep moving. This place will be lousy with Imps soon. The river, the ghosts tell her. They have to get to the lava river.

She senses the roving eyes of the Armorer, making silent avowals of their company.

“This one is hurt?” She points at Cara.

“She saved me, too,” Din speaks up. “She has the Sight. She foresaw that I was to be injured and put herself in harm’s way.”

“This is the Way.”

* * *

Once they’re on the boat, making their way down river, Din moves to stand by her. She can feel the coarse fabric of his outer suit against the soft skin just above her elbow. A scent of rain falls like a faint pin drop before disappearing, covered by the heavy wafts of sulfur.

“What is it?” Her fingers trace the outline of the embossed metal signet on his pauldron.

“A mudhorn. Remind me to tell you the story,” he says, adding: “I can take him.”

She’s forgotten. The droid must have passed him to her, but it’s escaped her memory. Somehow, she’s ended up holding the bag with the kid, despite not doing the whole baby thing. The little one’s giving her a candid look, obsidian eyes wide and owlish, blinking up at her.

She rests the bag on her hip, adjusts the strap of the rifle across her torso. “I got it. You worry too much, gonna give yourself wrinkles under there.”

He’s smiling, albeit exhaustedly; she can tell. He idly pets the crinkly forehead of the little one in her arms.

“There’s something…” she begins, “you should know.”

There’s a sound like machinery powering up, and all of them turn sharply, blasters raised to find the astromech droid, thought to be fried, rising to stand at the stern of the boat. It stretches tall, limbs elongating, heads taller than any of them. It makes a series of beeps while they stare at it dumbly.

“Don’t suppose anyone speaks droid,” Din blurts out.

“He’s asking where to take us,” IG-11 says.

Greef answers for the nervous group. “Down river, to the lava flats.”

They fall into silence for the rest of their journey. There’s no sense of time deep underground. The rough cracks on the walls above are broken enough for reedy whispers of sunlight to through, occasionally lighting their way.

“How’s the head, Dune?” It’s Greef. He’s sidled in on the low bench in the center of the raft, bends to speak lowly in her ear.

She shrugs one apathetic shoulder. “Fine.”

The older man stifles a disproving hum. He makes a brief nod in Mando’s direction, positioned at the front of boat, staring moodily ahead. “Did something happen between you two?”

Her eye roll is enormously defensive. First the droid was trying to suggest something, now this. “What? No!”

Greef’s returning stare is neutral. “You’re holding his kid for kriffsakes.”

Cara isn’t listening. She takes in her surroundings, the hot, heavy putrid air, the ghastly tunnel walls climbing high overhead, even hears the scuttling of tiny creatures, eyes red, lurking along the banks. Confusion puckers her brow, etches the indents a little firmer into her skin. The tall outline of the droid stands at the bow of the boat. It’s not over yet.

“I’ve seen this,” she says. “We need to stop the boat.”

“What!?”

Greef’s outrage draws the Mandalorian and the droid’s attention. Din is the first at her side. “What’s wrong?”

The Child squirms, discomfited in her arms, making a low, throaty whine. A bead of sweat makes its way down the back of her neck, makes her shiver. The darkness only grows, the shadows lengthening.

“They’re waiting for us. We need to stop the boat.”

“Stop the boat!” She implores the astromech droid steering them, to no avail. “Do you hear me?! I said stop it.”

Din is at the front, clicking buttons on his vambrace. The dim circle of light appears ahead – their exit.

“Stormtroopers!” He confirms, reading the heat signatures. “They’re flanking the exit. Must be an entire platoon.”

Cara pulls her blaster out. “Hey droid, stop the boat!”

She doesn’t really mean to, but in her panic, she fires the weapon, and it blows the droid’s head off with a loud sound and squeak of metal. Cursing, she bites her tongue, looking guiltily at the Child, sorry he had to witness all that. He just whimpers, tucks himself further into the high collar of his robes.

The boat hasn’t stopped moving.

“Looks like we fight,” Greef says, unholstering his blasters.

“They’re too many,” Din counters.

“We can’t surrender.” She and Din trade meaningful glances. The heat of the lava is getting to her, or maybe her concussion. The ticking of a clock counts down in her head. _A river of lava…_

“We _can’t_ ,” she repeats to her companions.

It’s the droid that speaks next. “This is unacceptable. I will eliminate the enemy and you will escape.”

“What are you talking about?” Din butts in. “You can’t self-destruct.”

The droid cannot be captured. “I must be destroyed. I can no longer carry this for you.” He sets down the jetpack Din received as a gift from the Armorer. “Nor can I watch the Child.”

“Your base command is to protect the Child. That supersedes your manufacturer’s protocol, right?”

An eerie silence befalls them.

The Mandalorian is desperate. “Right?!”

“This is correct. Victory through combat is impossible,” the droid goes on. “We will be captured. The Child will be lost. Sadly, there is no scenario where the Child is saved, in which I survive.”

The Mandalorian wavers. “But you’ll be destroyed?”

“There is no reason to be sad, I have never been alive.”

The droid is already stepping over the side of the boat, into the lava river. Greef’s hollering after it. In her arms, the Child watches in silent awe. She can’t tear her gaze away from the droid’s sacrifice, but she finally understands.

She thinks of Kuiil.

It doesn’t matter if any of them make it to tomorrow. Another sun will rise, whether she stands at the blue dawn to witness it or not. The future may be a fickle thing, but some things are so stubbornly meant to happen, even all the will of the galaxy, all the stars in the universe, cannot prevent.

* * *

When she opens her eyes, she’s in her bed.

There’s someone moving around her house, she can hear footsteps on the other side of the door. A flash of movement between the cracks. There’s a comforting, murmuring voice, and the door creaks as it opens.

Cara’s throat is dry. Her head feels clear, and she feels rested, energized. She must have slept in later than she thought. She cannot tell the exact time for it is a grey day, rainy on Nevarro. The sky and earth one dull ashen color.

Something tiny is making its way across the floor of her bedroom. She catches a pale green and brown haze before closing her eyes, pretending to sleep. She can hear it shuffling, pulling itself up her covers with a muffled giggle. Cara moves her feet, trapping the tiny thing between her ankles and it lets out a shriek just as her eyes fly open.

“Gotcha,” she whispers, and she’s surprised to find the corners of her mouth are crinkling into a smile. The Child giggles; caught red-handed.

There’s a figure looming in the doorway, half in shadow.

“You’re looking better,” Din remarks.

He’d spent every hour of the night waking her to check on her concussion, until the early hours of the morning when he deemed her out of danger.

The Child wiggles free of her ankle hold and waddles up the rest of her bed at a great speed. He then trips, caught in his large robes and lands in a heap, face-first into the sheets at Cara’s hip. She snorts.

The Mandalorian – Din – is suddenly closer, looming over her to pull the Child upright by the neck of his robes.

“What’d I say about running?” he gently chides the little thing with an amused chuckle. The kid only squeaks in protestation until he’s happily seated in Cara’s lap.

She tuts, fussing over the Child, and kisses the little green hands that make grabbing motions at her face.

Din looks awkward, hunched, shrunken, like he’s trying to compensate for how large and intimidating he is, covered in metal and gear. Like he’s too aware he’s in her bedroom, on her bed no less; the edge dipping slightly under his weight where he sits.

Cara hums, mouth suddenly dry. “It’s not going to work on me.”

“What’s that?”

“Bringing your cute kid along to make me feel better.” She pokes the kid’s round belly, he latches onto her finger, squeezing.

“Oh? So, you admit he’s cute?”

Cara loathes to admit anything regarding these two. She thought they’d be in the next parsec by now. She swallows, audibly, around that thought and it makes her choke on her own saliva.

“Here, drink this.” He hands her the glass of water on her nightstand, watches while she takes long, gulping sips of it.

The Child looks candidly between the adults, ears perky.

“How’s your head? May I?”

Ducking forward just enough, she offers her head so he can feel around the base of her skull. “Bacta spray really did work, just like the droid said,” Din mutters.

 _A droid walking in a river of lava._ She shuts her eyes against the rest. It all happened so fast. The ringing in her ears from the explosion. The gloomy exit from the tunnel. The marks of the droid’s self-destruction on the banks of the river. Then the dogfight with the TIE fighter. Mando taking off on his jetpack, watching from the ground while he dodged the TIE’s blaster and blew it out of the sky. The dreary walk back to down, realizing it was all over – victory like a funeral march.

She’s afraid to ask. “…and Kuiil?”

“I buried him.”

“If I had known…” she relents, heart sinking. She scrunches her nose. “It…feels like a dream.”

The Child makes a comforting chirp from her lap, he’s sucking on a pendant, hanging from a dark cord on his neck.

“Lemme see this,” she takes the pendant: a Mythosaur, made of beskar, sticky with drool.

The Child kicks his feet on Cara’s lap, humming while he sticks the gift from Din back into his mouth.

Her stomach is absolutely doing acrobatics right now because she can _feel_ Din. Her guard must be down. There’s a warmth there, spilling off this beskar-clad man in waves, his concern for her feels like a summer’s day. There’s a disturbance in the air around him, waiting for a moment to clear. A question forming on his lips that he cannot speak.

“I’m going to find the Child’s people. That’s my mission,” Din says.

She’s been dreading this moment. Mostly because she has no sense of an answer. Her dreams have been silent, thus she’s without her usual guides. But then, he’s rubbing little circles with his thumb on the back of her hand and Cara forgets herself.

“I could use someone with your skills. I’ll pay you…handsomely. Even split on all bounties if you want—”

“Din.” His name sounds strange on her lips. She thinks she can get used to calling him by his name, even if it’s just between them. “Just ask me will ya?”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> translations:  
> cyare - beloved  
> cyar'ika - darling, sweetheart  
> ner kar'ta - my heart
> 
> xoxo


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings: family feelings, light light angst, age-old Romantics, bickering

“Are we there yet?”

“Not yet.”

She’s blindfolded, being led down a small path. In her arms, the Child won’t stop squirming, he’s excited, but impatient in keeping the ruse up any longer. Din holds one of her hands, walking them both through the forest.

“Okay,” Din says after what felt like an eternity. “We’re here.”

He helps to untie the rag around her eyes and, as the piece of material falls from her face, the Child chirps, awaiting her reaction. They’re in a small clearing in the Sorgan forests, and what appears to be an abandoned hut sits before them, tiny and humble under the tall trees.

“Omera said it’s been abandoned for decades,” Din explains. “It’ll need some work, but it’s ours. If you want it?”

Cara’s mouth opens, but her words fail. Wanting to be released, the Child whines for attention. She sets him upon the ground, where he immediately goes to explore, climbing up the rickety stairs that lead up to the front entrance, which is missing a door. Part of the roof has caved in in the back and the windows all need new coverings.

“We can expand on it, I’m thinking a bigger porch, extra room for the kid. It’s quiet…private.” Din reaches up and takes off his helmet, as if making his point.

She’s seen his face many times now, but the simple reveal still steals her breath away. They eased into married life so subtly, with little change of their habits, that at times, even Cara forgets they’ve already exchanged their vows, and that he truly is her _husband_ , and their clan is now three.

She has to forcibly tear her eyes away from the way Din’s wavy hair falls messily around his head, sticking wildly up in some places now freed from the confines of his helmet. Hues of chestnut and golden amber in the sunlight. Warm brown eyes meet her own darker ones, almost asking permission. She’ll grant him anything if he always looks at her like that – all parted lips and tousled hair, the shadow of a dimple on his right cheek, the crinkling around his eyes softening his features.

It is indeed peaceful here. She follows in the footsteps of the Child, taking in the small hut for herself.

“You didn’t think the Crest was going to be our home forever?” Din calls to her as she makes her way round the property.

She has no words, just a bubble of feeling, like the Razor Crest is in hyperspace inside her skin. Walking around, she begins to see it for herself, the start of their new home. That’s the window where her daughter’s bedroom will be; over there is the master bedroom, which has the best views of the sunset, and where she and Din will make love as often as they want. The house will be where the Child will play and get to be a kid before he goes off to train with others like him; where Cara and her strong-willed daughter will argue and make up; where Din will show his children the stars; where they will cobble together an imperfect but precious peace, brick by brick. And in the evenings, their family will gather and sit and eat, and just be. Together.

She already knows it.

He’s standing exactly where she left him when she circles back. He looks unguarded, the helmet making rude passes in his hands nervously, but he’s hopeful. “You haven’t said anything,” he mumbles.

She takes his hand, the one not cradling his helmet, presses it to her warm, smiling face. “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for you to bring me here?”

His shoulders sag and he erupts into laughter, dipping his head just enough to tap their foreheads together. “Can’t keep any secrets from you, huh?”

They settle in for the night, unpack their day bags, and unroll sleeping gear. They brought blankets and a light dinner. Din lights up a small fire in the yard for warmth and to heat up their food, while Cara entertains the Child with a bedtime story from her Alderaan school days. Together, they sit under the stars.

“We can have a vegetable garden over there,” she says, pointing to one spot on the edge, where the grasses give way to the tree line. “And we should set up something rudimentary for target practice. I’m not ready to let my blaster get rusty just yet.”

The Child babbles in her lap, holding tightly onto her finger. Cara chuckles at him. “Yes, lots of swimming and frog hunting, I agree.”

Eventually, the Child becomes sleepy, and crawls to snuggle in Din’s lap. The Mandalorian wraps his son in his cape, pulling his wife over until she, too, lays her head on his leg.

Cara can’t stop watching the way the firelight dances across his features, like a trick mirror – darkening, then highlighting, moving, as if the very light cannot stay too long on him, battling with the shadows. She loves him, for all his darkness and his goodness. The canvas of stars in the night sky, peeking through the treetops, act as a kind of halo over his head.

He looks down at her, even the shadows cannot obscure the affection in his deep brown eyes. It’s better than any dream. “Grow old with me here?”

She scratches the coarse hairs on his jawline that are already peppered with grey.

“Okay,” she says easily, and she has to stifle her own inappropriate tendency to laugh because the kid is sleeping soundly. “If you say so, husband.”

“If _you_ say so, wife,” he retorts with a knowing smirk.

Even later, she tucks the Child among the other blankets and goes to sit on the old porch, dangling her legs off it to watch the stars, and Din joins her to stand perfectly between her open legs.

“Do you know your name, Cara, is very similar to a word in Mando’a,” he tells her. “ _Ka’ra_ – it means stars.”

He tilts his head to briefly take in the breathtaking view of them overhead.

“I prefer this view,” he adds.

“What view?”

When she drops her head from the skies, brought herself back to earth, he’s already staring back at her, and then, like an offering, he’s there. A veil lifts, the curtain draws back, and dropping like a stone in the pool of her soul, she feels _him._

He’s pensive, serious. A calm pool of water on a clear day. She feels his presence, his mindfulness, and, as he sweeps a strand of hair off her cheek, a brush of yearning. He’s whole, grounding, solemn but not heavy; no wavering of purpose; a resoluteness that feels natural, self-assured, not aggressive in its confidence, nor bearing.

It’s love. She feels his love.

She welcomes him into herself, easy and unhesitant, fitting into her soul under her own skin. She doesn’t think too long on that, releasing herself from the burden of her overthinking mind, and the racing thoughts tracking her senses, as they drop like rain into soil. It takes almost no effort – the way they can exist together.

“Ner kar’ta,” he says, a soft smile gracing his handsome face. She knocks her knees against his hips, squeezing him lightly. Their hands fall naturally into each other’s, crossing the galaxies to entwine, laying gently in her lap. They have all the time to themselves.

“Ner Cara, cyar’ika.”

His eyes tell her everything she needs to know, all his love, all of himself. She pulls him towards her, never breaking contact, and his next suggestion makes her eyebrows climb up her forehead.

“Let’s make a baby.”

* * *

The forest is viridescent, alive with color in the high, late summer sun. Mother and daughter meander in the lazy afternoon, strolling side by side. Their boots crunch softly on the woodland floor, mossy and verdant.

“I can’t believe you’re selling it all. I’m going to miss coming back here.”

“Your dad and I think it’s best to be near ad’ika for as long as we still can. We’re not getting any younger.” Cara’s eyes still crinkle into near slits when she smiles broadly and the tattoo on her cheek adds a touch of rebellion to her gracefully aged face.

Lyssa smiles at her mother. She’s nearly the same height as her by now, but Lyssa will be eighteen next spring, and she’ll be on to the next stage of her life, finishing her final year at The Academy on New Mandalore.

“Sorgan will always be my home,” the younger woman says with a touch of sadness. “I guess everything has an end,” she adds a little firmer, “doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth it all. That it’s not without value.”

A small wrinkle appears between Lyssa’s dark brows as she mulls it over. It makes her resemble her father perfectly. Her girlhood curls have straightened out, turning to soft waves, like her father’s hair, in a lush chestnut color. Every so often, when Cara can get her sit in one place long enough, she’ll braid it for her, in the Alderaan fashion, like her own mother did.

Cara’s impressed with that answer. She nudges Lyssa playfully. “When did you get so smart?”

“Hey, we never finished it!” Lyssa perks up, as their walk around the property brings them near a pond and they circle it before heading back towards the house.

They have the time. Lyssa’s father is running late, though he said he’d be back by now.

“What’s that?” Cara asks, distractedly looking to the skies for his ship.

“Remember that bedtime story you used to tell me, when I was little – we’d do it almost every night?” The younger woman’s eyes glaze over with the fond memory. “The story of how you and dad met? All the bad guys you fought. We never finished it!”

Cara turns a wry eye to Lyssa. “You’ve heard that story so many times you could tell it in your sleep.”

Looking at her daughter, with her whole life ahead of her, makes Cara, even though she’s only a few years away from sixty, feel old. Her hair is grown out, now thickly braided in a single strand hanging down the center of her back, the black color giving way to streaks of grey and silver. She has more wrinkles, and though she is still strong as on ox, her movements are slower, weighted with purpose.

“Yeah, but,” Lyssa shrugs, “I guess I always wanted to know how it ended.”

She took her daughter’s arm, swinging their hands in tandem to their strides. Cara’s smile has a secret. “With you.”

* * *

As soon as the outline of the Razor Crest appears in the sky overhead, the women drop their dinner prepping to rush out of the small hut to greet it.

The ramp’s already opening as soon as touch down, and a little green figure is running down it, tripping over his long brown robes. Lyssa is the first to catch him, promptly picking up the womp rat and bestowing lavish kisses upon his brow and tiny cheeks.

“Let’s see the little one,” Cara says, coming up behind her daughter. “Look’s bigger, does he?”

The Child squeals and warbles. Cara rests her forehead on his wrinkled brow. “Welcome back ad’ika.”

The tall figure of the Mandalorian comes down the ramp, looking fearsome in his shining armor and dark cape rustling. All these years, and Cara’s heart flutters, a small intake of breath from her parted lips.

He reaches up and removes his helmet, shaking out his helmet hair. “What’s this, senaar’ika? No kisses for your old man.”

The seventeen (and a half)-year-old swells with joy. Tackling her father, she makes him stumble backwards a few feet, armor clicking.

“No, buir, plenty of kisses.” They hold their foreheads to each other for an extended moment, while Cara and ad’ika look on fondly.

“Hm, ner senaar’ika, it’s so good to have you back home,” he tells her, embracing her tightly and peppering her face with kisses after kisses.

“Okay, dad, mumph, stop,” Lyssa grumbles, as he doesn’t let up. Yet, she’s smiling broadly through all the attention.

“Tell him,” Cara nudges her elbow into her daughter’s side.

Din looks sharply at Lyssa. “Tell me what?”

Lyssa’s beaming. “My Fighting Corp is starting Rising Phoenix! I wanted to borrow your jetpack, get a head start. Maybe you could give me some pointers…”

“Ask your mother.”

“She already said yes!”

“Did she?” He cocks the woman in question a look, brown eyes bemused. Cara bounces the Child on her hip and gives her husband an innocent expression.

Lyssa’s eyes are practically tearing up, as wide and innocent as the Child’s, silently begging.

The Mandalorian’s shoulders sag, wilting because he cannot say not to that face. “Okay, sure,” he relents with a fond sigh, “we’ll do some Phoenix practice—”

He can’t finish because Lyssa shouts with excitement, like she’s been handed the keys to her own kingdom, jumping up and down. She rushes to kiss and hug her father again and again. “Thank you, thank you, buir!” Taking the kid from her mother’s arms, “C’mon vod, let’s go! We’ve got flying lessons!”

The two children, in a tornado of excitement run back to the house, their combined shouts echoing in the clearing.

“I mean later, not tonight,” Din calls after his children. It falls on deaf ears.

Cara crosses her arms over her chest and taps her foot impatiently. She fixes her hardest glare upon her husband. “You’re late, you were supposed to be here _yesterday_.”

He moves away, setting in the last of his landing procedure. Doing final checks on his ship before he exits. “I forgot, I forgot!” Waving his hand, like he’s batting an annoying fly away. “I thought it was today. I got my dates mixed up.”

Cara just shook her head, trailing after him. “I sent you _three_ holomessages about it, with the exact date in all of them. Are you not listening to the messages your _lovely wife_ sends you?”

“I got ‘em, I just got the day wrong. You know that Skywalker guy talks a lot, he—” he pauses as he takes a bag hanging from the wall and checks the contents. “He had to fill me in on ad’ika’s progress. They’re all excited to have us stay with them at his scho—”

“ _Yesterday_ ,” Cara interrupts.

“Well I’m here now,” Din snaps, “and I had to make a pit stop.”

“You could have sent a holo.”

Din threw his hands up, stomping down the ramp and out into the field just beyond their modest house. “There was no time! You’re getting mean in your old age, woman!”

“And you’re gettin’ forgetful in _your_ old age!” She barks back. Age may have softened her in some respects, but she’s as feisty as ever.

The glint in his eye is dangerous, makes Cara’s heart leap directly into her throat. He hasn’t looked at her that way in a long time. She backs away as he takes two long strides in her direction.

She sticks her finger out, as if that’s enough to stay his approach. She feels like his prey. “N-no—” it falters as soon as it leaves her lips.

“You just like pushing buttons, don’t you?” Din growls, eyes dark and heated, but it’s not from anger.

He stalks closer, Cara’s boots skid in the grass. A low heat curling in her belly brings a different kind of thrill. The thin line of her mouth flits upwards, and she tries to hide it, but it’s too late – he’s already seen the flash of her smile, and with it his opening.

“Cyare,” he says, and it’s low, and like gravel, and saturated with wild suggestion. Cara thinks of stones sliding, sparks of ember flying, a strong liquor rasping on her tongue.

There’s something brewing in his gaze and she falters, before fiercely returning it, fists clenched at her sides.

In an instant, they reach for each other. It’s like when they were younger, when they feverishly fumbled for each other under cover of darkness. Just two bodies, needy, in the night.

His broad hands, gloves and all, reach and entangle in her thick braid, gripping her like she’s his last lifeline, and his kiss is steely, hungry and greedy all at once. It’s dizzying, the way he can still enliven her, make her body _throb_ , ache with the attention. She’s just as passionately kissing back, his equal in every way. They’re lost in each other.

Breaking for air, he presses his forehead to her, their noses brushing. They hold each other tightly, breathless.

“Getting yourself all worked up, huh?” he drawls, sweetly in her ear.

“I hate missing out,” Cara says dolefully, eyes downcast. “I get afraid, I’ll never see that stupid ship come back.”

“I’d never leave you.”

She clicks her tongue at him. “I don’t mean _that_.”

“I know. It won’t happen – you’d know before any of us.” His smile is enough to make his solo dimple appear on his cheek.

“Doesn’t mean I don’t worry.”

“I really did screw up the days, cyar’ika. I’m sorry.”

He kisses her, gentler but still needy. She tugs him around the waist, not wanting any daylight between them.

“Ok, ew, gross,” they hear from the porch.

They break apart to see Lyssa standing there, hoisting a giggling ad’ika onto her hip. “Are you two done yet?” She calls over. “Your children are hungry!”

“Be right there, senaar,” her father answers.

“Whatever, lovebirds!” Lyssa responds, makes a fake retching motion, which makes the Child burst into more giggling and cooing. They disappear back into the hut. Lyssa, muttering –“maybe we should stay at Winta’s house for the night, huh, vod?” – under her breath.

Cara looks back at her riduur, the father of her daughter, of their adopted son. The only man she ever loved. To her he hasn’t aged a day since the first day he revealed his face to her. Of course, he has a few more wrinkles, a near permanent expression of somberness on his handsome, rugged face, and his thick hair is now an attractive mix of salt and pepper. His eyes are the same: gentle, loving, expressive, and deeply hypnotic – they might be her favorite feature. After his lips – still plush under the very permanent whisker of hair over his top lip, and his beard grows in greyer every year.

“I missed you,” she hums.

His hands glide down her back, settling on her wide hips. “It’s only been a week.” He nips at her bottom lip, and she smiles into his affection. Maybe the kids should stay with Winta for the night, as Cara won’t be able to keep her hands off him.

They sway in each other’s arms, under the afternoon sun and the tall canopy of trees, with the field and pond, and small hut and the wide porch, Cara’s vegetable garden, and the woodshed in the back – their home, if only for a little while longer. Cara’s seen it from beginning to end, the whole story of her life, and she wouldn’t change any of it. She’s ready for the next part.

“Ner kar’ta, ner Cara,” his hawk-like nose touches her cheek, bringing her attention to his face. An old scar has turned silver on the bridge, Cara has kissed it often. “Grow old with me?”

“We are old, you fool. And— you already asked me that,” Cara adjusts the cowl of his cape around his neck. “I believe I even agreed. Or did you forget already?”

“No,” his smile is cheeky, “I remember. How could I forget? We made love right on the porch that night, under the stars.”

“Had to dig splinters out of my ass,” Cara gripes.

“We had our few rounds in the grass. Could always do a repeat?”

“Are you up for it, old man?”

* * *

After dinner, the family of four sat around the table for probably the last time in their little house before they move out. They’re happy and full, only a touch forlorn. The house is saturated with memories. Like ghosts, they linger, haunt every corner.

With little ceremony, Din sets a square box upon the table before Lyssa.

“What’s this?” she inspects the item.

“An early birthday present,” Din shrugs.

The Child waddles closer, ears perking up with interest.

“The pitstop?” Cara, piling the dinner plates to wash in the sink, flashes Din a crooked smile.

“Just open it,” Din prompts Lyssa.

She does, lifting the top. Cara can’t see from where she’s standing, but she watches as her daughter’s face changes with the reveal. The woman’s jaw goes slack, the surprise evident on her young face.

Cara feeling the interminably long seconds pass, and senses that she’s no longer looking at her little girl, telling her bedtime stories. Lyssa is a young woman. Cara wonders where all the time went.

Din’s holding his breath. The Child is the only one that makes a sound: a small squeak of excitement.

Lyssa lifts the object out of the box and Cara gasps, forgetting about cleaning up the table. It gleams, shiny, silver and round – the beskar is fresh, unpainted, crafted perfectly.

“It’s time you had your own,” says Din, voice full of pride. “You are a Mandalorian.”

“Buir,” Lyssa whispers, lip trembling. Her amber eyes go misty.

It’s a helmet.

Din picks up the Child and holds him in his lap. “One day, when you’re big enough, you’ll get one too. Promise, ner verd’ika.”

“Wherever did you get the beskar?” Cara wonders, staring at the beautiful piece of armor in her daughter’s hands.

“Pulled some favors with the covert,” he winks at Lyssa.

She turns to her brother. “What do you think, ad’ika? Should I try it on?” The Child claps his hands.

"G'on, little bird," Cara encourages, touching her daughter's elbow, the other snaking around her husband’s shoulders. "This is just the beginning."

FIN

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mando'a translations:  
> riduur - spouse/husband/wife  
> ner kar'ta - my heart  
> Cyare/cyar'ika - beloved, sweetheart (ner Cara = my Cara)  
> ka'ra - stars  
> vod - brother  
> Verd'ika - little soldier  
> Senaar'ika - little bird  
> buir - parent/father/mother
> 
> \-------------------------  
> Wow. What a journey! I'm a little sad it's over. Thanks to everyone who commented and gave kudos. You guys are stars and I love you! Kept me going, because this story was a challenge in so many ways.  
> So excited for season 2 of this show. Cannot wait to see what happens :)
> 
> xoxo


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